The Rose Tattoo
1847 Callowhill Street
Two recent articles on our website looked at public characters in the neighborhood and at a successful immigrant family. In the article on Jane Jacobs, we note her observation that the long-term businesspersons in a neighborhood become the watchdogs of a community by dint of longevity and interaction with the neighbors. In the article about the Dinan Funeral Home, the story of a long tenured Irish immigrant family is told. The Dinan family lived and had the funeral home at eight different neighborhood sites since 1896. Another family, the Maltepes, has been in the neighborhood for forty years, and owns eleven sites in the neighborhood, including the Rose Tattoo, making them the largest property owners by number. This is an introduction to them and the newly reopened Rose Tattoo.
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As a bonus for cinephiles (that's derived from the Greek for kinema, movement, and philos, love), there will be six movie references in this article. For the logophiles (Greek logos meaning word), there will be a few Greek vocabulary words, including the name of our fair city with a female internal organ in its name.
The Rose Tattoo at 1847 Callowhill Street in March 2025.
The Baldwin Apartments are to its right.
The Rose Tattoo Site
The Rose Tattoo occupies the northeast corner of 19th and Callowhill Streets. This site was formerly inhabited by the Lenni Lenape, then Thomas Penn's Springettsbury estate, then the Bush Hill estate of the Hamilton family. When William Hamilton died in 1813 the Bush Hill estate was subdivided.
The two empty lots at 1845 and 1847 Callowhill Street were sold in 1845. By 1849 buildings had been erected at 1845 and 1847 Callowhill Street on lots extending north to what is now Shamokin Street. Notice the last phrase with reference to the current Shamokin Street in the deed: "for public use forever."
The family of Joseph Collins would own the property until 1899.
Mary Hamilton (1771-1849) was the niece of William Hamilton, the owner of the Bush Hill estate until his death in 1813. Our Hamilton Street is named in honor of this family. For more genealogy of this family see outside link here.
Mary Hamilton's "forever" use of Shamokin Street lasted until the 1971 Franklin Town project, for which the eastern half of the street was vacated.​
Speaking of the Franklin Town project, there was a similar failed development by a private consortium in 1814. James Hamilton agreed to the sale of the Bush Hill estate to a group with famous Philadelphia surnames: Thomas Cadwalader, Thomas Biddle, John Wharton and a few others. The estate was to be divided into lots for leasing and the Hamiltons were to receive ground rents totaling $36,000 per year. By 1821 the consortium had raised $200,000 in principal to begin development but shortly thereafter abandoned the project. As the deed above shows, by 1849 the lot sales were fee simple.
Portion of 1859 Hexamer map showing the block was built out with three-story rowhouses.
19th Street runs vertically on the left. Rhoads is now Shamokin Street.
Emory Methodist Episcopal Church on the right is discussed in our article here.
In 1899 Susan Collins sold 1847 Callowhill Street to Herman Schenkel, who owned it until it was sold to Harry J. Moyer in 1910. In 1925 Moyer sold it to Harry Wolfington, who owned the auto shop formerly occupied by the Graham Trimming factory at the northeast corner of Hamilton and 19th Streets. Wolfington was foreclosed in 1935 and the building, along with many others during the Great Depression, sat vacant until it was sold to Nathan and Gussie Zeenberg in 1945. The Zeenbergs opened the Dublin Bar there in 1947. The property was transferred to their son, Nathan Zinberg, in 1950; then to Barry Sandrow in 1979 and to Richard Masiello in 1987. Masiello had opened The Rose Tattoo there in 1983 while he also ran the restaurant Chaucer's at 1946 Lombard Street. In 1993 it was sold to Michael and Helene Weinberg, who ran the Rose Tattoo until 2019 (helene from the Greek meaning torch). The entire property from Callowhill Street to Shamokin Street was sold to Maltea Properties LLC in 2019. The restaurant continued doing well until Covid forced its closure in March of 2020. Chef de cuisine Alan Lichtenstein, who had been there for thirty years, left to work at and then own the 18-seat BYOB French bistro, The Little Hen, in central Haddonfield, New Jersey.
Liquor permits granted in 1894. Within two blocks of the current Baldwin Park there were 34 bars at the time. The liquor license at 1847 goes at least as far back as 1890, when James Rodgers held it. Caroline Rebmann had the permit at 1847 Callowhill Street in 1894. In 1897 she married the above named Herman Schenkel and they ran the bar together and owned it from 1899 to 1910, with the liquor license in Herman's name. Herman sold the liquor license to James Morris in 1903 who in turn sold it to Joseph Regli in 1907, to William Murphy in 1908, then to William Smith in 1910. Harry Moyer, who had purchased the building in 1910, bought the license in 1913. Liquor licenses became worthless with Prohibition from 1920 to 1933. The booze-less restaurant at 1847 Callowhill was offered for sale in 1927 for $1,000, with a rooming house on the upper floors.
Today there are three neighborhood bars besides the Rose Tattoo: Kelliann's at 16th and Spring Garden, McCrossen's on 20th and Buttonwood, and Kite and Key on Callowhill across from the Rose Tattoo.
Liquor licenses traveled separately from the tavern's real estate. In 1893, licenses in Pennsylvania were capped at one license for every 1,000 residents of a county, and the license fee was $1,000. Today in Philadelphia there is allotted one liquor license for every 3,000 inhabitants, and the quota is already maxed out so that the fee at auction starts at around $150,000. Center City licenses command much more. The reasons for the reduction in the number of corner bars is discussed further in the outside link here (Thank you Governor Gifford Pinchot, Whole Foods and Puttshack!).
Portion of the 1901 City atlas
North is at top, 19th Street runs vertically on the left, Callowhill Street runs horizontally on the bottom. Pink signifies brick. Yellow is wood. Most homes have wooden privies out back.
The properties at 1847 Callowhill, 409-411 North 19th Street, and 1846 Shamokin Street are now part of The Rose Tattoo.
1843 Callowhill Street was the original site of Frank Dinan's funeral parlor, from 1896.
1845 Callowhill was the W.J. Reynolds Funeral Home, from which the child victims of an arsenic poisoner were buried in 1906. They had lived at 1842 Hamilton Street.
Aerial photo in 1928 looking northwest. The future Rose Tattoo is the corner turreted building in the center. Photo credit with high resolution here.
In the upper left is the ACME warehouse with a sign that says
ROBINSON and CRAWFORD
THE HOUSE THAT QUALITY BUILT
It is now the site of the Tivoli Condominiums.
The former Hallahan High School is in bottom right.
An enlargement of the photo showing 1847 Callowhill Street and neighbors.
Ad from the Philadelphia Inquirer on 6 April 1947 for a split-shift waitress.
This is the year the Dublin Bar opened for business.
As discussed in many of the articles on this website, ads were not equal opportunity in years past. Especially ironic is that a bar named after the city of Dublin, whose denizens experienced anti-ethnic discrimination themselves, would be so oblivious to ethnic discrimination against others.​
Ad for a family home from the June 4, 1907 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Looking east on Callowhill Street from 19th Street in 1955. A foyer has been added to the entrance of the Dublin Bar.
Despite having been a saloon for well over one hundred years, there were remarkably few adverse incidents in the building.
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In 1916 Daniel Quinlan of 1907 Callowhill Street was refused further drinks by bartender Charles Diamond. Quinlan then broke two of the barkeep's ribs with a swing of a bottle. Bail was set at $1,000 (inflation adjusted to $31,000 in today's dollars).
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In 1934 Edward Kennedy, a 9-year-old tenant in the building was seriously injured trying to jump off the 19th Street bridge onto a boxcar below.
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In 1991, as discussed in our article here, four businessmen left the Rose Tattoo and three of them were shot on the Ben Franklin Parkway on their way back to work at Cigna. One of them died, and the assailant, a second-year resident physician at Hahnemann, was sentenced to life in a maximum-security psychiatric facility.
Story from the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 2, 1934.
The boy was probably carried up the ramp on the north side of the Cut under the Pickering Springs overhang to 17th Street.
Portion of a 1958 Sanborn map from the map collection at the Parkway Central Library. The Consolidated Health Center is the Children's Crisis Treatment Center and has the same footprint as today's Baldwin Apartments. The tire store at 1937 would become Franklin Beverage and then would be purchased by the developers of the Baldwin Apartments as an access driveway. The upholstery factory would become today's Cleveland Street when the Franklin Town project was drawn up in 1971. Michael Weinberg would add on a dining room to the north side of 1847 Callowhill in the 1980s.
The Maltepes Family in the Baldwin Park Neighborhood
Enticement to America! Come ready to work!
Philadelphia Inquirer ad from January 2, 1968
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States via a national quota system. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. No immigrants from Asia were allowed entry. The law effectively restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia in an attempt to preserve American Western European homogeneity, i.e. selective xenophobia (from the Greek xenos meaning stranger and phobos meaning fear). Greeks already in Philadelphia formed an enclave called Greek Town centered geographically on 10th and Locust Streets and culturally on St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral at 256 South 8th Street. The expansion of the Jefferson Medical School and Hospital devastated the residential and small business character of that neighborhood. Many of the displaced Greek inhabitants made their way to a Greek community in Upper Darby.
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The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quotas, and instituted preferences for immigrants into the country, including having family members in this country. Immigration from Greece doubled over the next ten years. The expanding Greek community in Upper Darby established a new building for Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in 1965, and this served as the social center. In 1969 Theofanis Maltepes, then 30 years old, moved from Kondariotissa, a town (population 1,500, mostly tobacco farmers) in the shadow of Mount Olympus, to a rental on Marshall Road in Upper Darby. With him were his wife Maria and three children: Mihalis (Michael), Ioannis (John), and Nickoletta. Another son, Stelios (Steve), was born the following year as an American citizen from birth.
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It was actually Theo's wife Maria who was the driver to immigrate to the United States. Maria was a skilled seamstress whose sister-in-law worked at 11th and Vine Streets in the S. Makransky & Sons factory that opened in 1968. The Maltepes family landed in New York City on June 1, 1969, and by midnight that day were in Upper Darby. Maria went to work at 11th and Vine Street the next morning. Theofanis found work as a dishwasher in a restaurant and after five years the family bought a house at 48 Kent Street in Upper Darby, where Maria still lives. Besides the carrot of economic opportunity, the family was leaving behind life in Greece in a house with no indoor plumbing, no electricity, and an open dug well for water needs. The children knew a little English but the parents spoke none on arrival.
Eventually eldest son Mike bought a food cart of his own, selling hot dogs on the street, and Theofanis joined him in the food cart business. They worked their tails off and acquired more food carts, then brick and mortar restaurants. Theo's first restaurant was the Old London Pizzeria at Cheltenham and Germantown Avenue. His children cut their teeth on the food cart and pizza business but branched out into real estate as well. Oldest son Mike ran the Land of Pizza shop at 5646 Chester Avenue at age 19, starting there three years after the shop's former proprietor, Greek immigrant Argirios Papaioannou of 402 Kent Road, was murdered during a robbery. Mike decided to vacate that neighborhood after six months and briefly ran another pizzeria, Hellenic Pizza situated 1.5 miles north of his Upper Darby home. Twenty-four year old Michael acquired his first property in our neighborhood in 1984, and he and family members kept acquiring until their combined portfolio totaled eleven properties. As far as I can tell, the family owns the most property sites in the Baldwin Park neighborhood.
Below are the sites and dates of purchase:
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1837 Callowhill Street: 1984 Michael $75,000. This was the Franklin Beverage distributor before it moved across the street after the Baldwin Apartments were built.
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1839-1845 Callowhill: 1986 Michael $200,000. Now empty lots.
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321 North 19th: 1991 Nickoletta Maltepes. At one time a bakery, now apartments.
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404 North 19th: 1997 Michael $60,000. Mike's daughter Alysia lives there with her husband Saki and daughter Mia.
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406 North 19th: 2013 Maltea Properties LLC. Empty lot to north of his home.
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1822 Callowhill: purchased by Theofanis in 1987 and served as home for Mike and his family. In 2014 the property was transferred to Nickoletta and Maria Maltepes. The building's ground floor is now Doma, a Japanese-Korean restaurant.
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1816 Callowhill: 2014 Michael Maltepes. Now the take-out section for Sabrina's cafe on the ground floor, with apartments above.
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1847 Callowhill: 2019 Maltea Properties LLC. This included 409-411 North 19th Street and 1846 Shamokin Street
​Michael, the current owner of the Rose Tattoo, dove into other enterprises besides food carts and pizzerias. He purchased a warehouse on 17th Street between North Street and Melon Streets in 1987. He started as a wholesale butcher shop called Franklin Gold Ribbon Meats, with a 5,000 -square-foot walk-in cooler with sides of beef hanging on hooks. The next venture in that building was Country Pure Juices in 1990. He manufactured juices, teas, and mixed fruit drinks elsewhere and distributed them from the warehouse, with the name of the building being Franklin Distributors (as contrasted with Franklin Beverage at 1837 Callowhill Street). He eventually gave regional distribution rights to Harold Honickman's beverage distribution business. This is the same Honickman who donated $50 million to Thomas Jefferson Hospital and was rewarded with his name on the new 19-story medical building on 11th and Chestnut Streets. Mike also developed a beverage he trademarked as Boston Tea and manufactured and distributed that himself after incorporating as the Maltepes Bottling Company LTD in 1994.
Thirty-year-old Mike Maltepes acting like Alexander the Great displaying his wares in front of the marketing territory to be conquered.
If you are in a revolutionary mood, you can have a Boston Tea party of your own at the Rose Tattoo. Mike still manufactures and distributes Boston Tea as well as juices and drinks under the Country Wild label.
​In the late 1990s Michael ran a boxing gym, the Back Alley Gym, at 17th and North Street in part of the warehouse. He made his debut as a boxing promoter in 1998 at the Blue Horizon on Broad Street, matching his younger brother Steve with another middleweight who failed the eye exam the day of the fight, thus canceling the bout.
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A wholesale butcher with sides of beef on hooks and a boxing gym in the same building. There's your first movie reference: Rocky.
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When Mike sold the warehouse to the Spring Garden Community Development Corporation in 2000, the warehouse was torn down and replaced by gated housing with inner courtyards. Mike's former site jumpstarted the boom in upscale housing in that neighborhood. Mike moved the gym to another warehouse, at 9th and Thompson Streets. He continued his beverage distribution business there, as well in another warehouse on the other side of the Frankford El at 820 West Girard Avenue.
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In December 1995 Mike Tyson, on the right, trained at the Back Alley Gym in preparation for his bout with Buster Mathis at the Spectrum in South Philadelphia.
That is Mike Maltepes on the left, in a different weight class.
Mike has one child, daughter Alysia. As often happens with first-generation immigrants, Mike dropped out of school in 11th grade to work to afford better education opportunities for his future family. Alysia spent twelve years at Friends Select School just south of our neighborhood, walking from her home at 1822 Callowhill Street. She made Mike proud by continuing on to get a Masters in English from Arcadia University.
Alysia Maltepes, Mike's daughter, in a screenshot from the movie The Greek American.
She wrote, directed, and starred in the 2007 movie, in which the closing shot shows her sitting in Baldwin Park contemplating the tragic events that had just transpired. Mike, who funded the production, has a limited number of DVDs available at the Rose Tattoo. For more about the movie see the outside link here (no spoilers). That's your second movie reference.
And for your third movie reference: the name of the Rose Tattoo comes from the 1955 movie of the same name, with Burt Lancaster starring. The film was nominated as Best Picture, and Anna Magnani won the Best Actress Oscar for that year.
This poster hangs in the restaurant on the staircase between the lower and mezzanine seating areas.
The Rose Tattoo bar had a soft opening in April 2025. If you visit the Rose Tattoo today (and you should!) Mike will often be there. Also there is a young man who began training as a boxer at the age of six in the Back Alley Gym. Kevin James, the young boxer, had promise but hung up his gloves at age 17 to work for Mike in various businesses over the last twenty years. He now serves as Mike's right-hand-man at the Rose Tattoo and other business ventures. Kevin is generous with his gratitude for the opportunities Mike gave him in the gym and in the business world.
17-year-old Kevin (right) with Mike in a photo from 2007.
"Mike saved me from the street and taught me to box."
Both Kevin and Mike appear in the film The Greek American.
Kevin in the lower level restaurant portion of the Rose Tattoo in May 2025.
Fresh flowers in hanging baskets and fancy ironwork give the dining area a New Orleans ambience, and the tiny lights along the ironwork make the room magical after the sun sets. There is a mezzanine dining area above this level as well. Once the restaurant starts up again, the bar seen behind Kevin will open.
Here's the same bar and the fourth through sixth movie references.
In 2017 a Philadelphia-based film titled Backfire was released with six separate scenes filmed in the Rose Tattoo. Filmed by Temple grad Dave Patten in just eight days, it showcased Philadelphia, especially the Baldwin Park near-neighborhood. The image above is a scene from the movie. Warning: some bad things happen in the Rose Tattoo in this film! Watch on Tubi here.
Other films with scenes from our neighborhood include Limitless from 2011 with Hallahan High School in several scenes as the police station and Trading Places from 1983 with the Mint building serving as another police station.
​Here is the real-life Mike behind the bar.
Rich wood finishes, mirrors and a tin ceiling harken back to the original glory of the 19th-century bar.
The soft opening for the bar began in April 2025.
Two other Maltepes Properties
I will give the history of two other neighborhood buildings owned by the Maltepes, working backwards in time.
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1816 Callowhill is now the take-out pickup site for Sabrina's Cafe a few doors to the east. Pickup here keeps Doordash, Caviar, Uber Eats, Postmates and Sabrina's own food delivery service out of the main cafe (although it doesn't always prevent double-parking).
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It was the Odyssey Greek Cafe in 2014.
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Prior to that the building, purchased in 1984 by the Unkefer Brothers Construction Company for $104,000, was their admin office. During this time the upper floors were used as offices for employees of the Philadelphia Youth Advocate Program, a firm hired by the City to provide in-home supervision of accused juvenile offenders. In 1989 fifteen employees of this program, a private non-profit, were themselves arrested and accused of submitting false wage claims. Most plea-bargained; two pled guilty and one went to trial.
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Before the Unkefer purchase, the building had a series of first floor retail businesses with apartments above.
1816 Callowhill Street in May 2025.
The flower vase logo on the sign matches that on Sabrina's Cafe.
Ad from the June 1, 1935 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. In a coincidence over an 80-year interval, Mike had this gray building facade painted blue after the 2014 purchase because he liked the color, not because he was aware of its historical color and designation as the Blue House.
Gnostikos means "of knowledge" in Greek, so there was a Greek allusion to the building well before the Odyssey Greek Cafe.
Now let's look at the last 120 years at 1822 Callowhill Street.​
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1822 Callowhill Street currently wears a sign proclaiming its existence as a Japanese-Korean noodle and sushi restaurant from 2010. Robert and Patti Moon, who had also owned Shiroi Hana on Locust near 15th since 1995, added a restaurant in our neighborhood with the 35-seat BYOB Doma, which is both Japanese for "home" and Korean for "cutting board."
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Charles Trachtenberg ran a tire shop, Charles Tires, out of both 1822 and 1837 Callowhill for several decades before his death in 1969. In fact, it was his son Norman who sold Mike Maltepes his first property in the neighborhood at 1837 Callowhill Street in the year 1984.
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In 1943 84-year-old Ireland-born Mary Dignan died. She had a dry goods store on the first floor and lived above the store for fifty years, having been one of the longest tenured residents in the neighborhood.
1822 Callowhill Street in May 2025.
unfinished draft
Photo from the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 22, 1942.
Mary "Digman" in the photo is a relative of Mary Dignan.
312 N. 19th Street is still there, serving as the library annex at the northwest corner of Wood and 19th Street.
Urbanist Jane Jacobs would have been delighted to see children playing on the sidewalk in front of unobtrusively observant adults as discussed in our article here.
Irish, French or Greek Neighborhood?
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As noted in our article about the Dinan Funeral Home, the Baldwin Park neighborhood was an ethnic Irish community for the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Philadelphia was labeled the French-est American city by the 2024 Michelin Green guide, based primarily on the Ben Franklin Parkway, the Parkway Central Library, the Family Court building, the Rodin, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art and City Hall, all but the last two being in the Baldwin Park neighborhood. Those buildings except for City Hall are neoclassical, recalling the architecture of the country of Greece that gave us so much in the way of art, statuary, philosophy and democratic ideals. Greek immigrants have had a presence in the neighborhood for the last half century. Aristides "George" Pappas ran George's Bar on the southeast corner of 18th and Callowhill Streets until he was forced to move to the Sabrina's Cafe site due to the construction of what is now the Fountain View senior apartments in 1975. After a half century of doing business in the neighborhood he died in 2023 and was buried by the Dinan Funeral Home. The Maltepes family is still with us, with siblings Mike, John and Nikoleta still living in the neighborhood, as is Mike's daughter Alysia and her family.
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Philadelphia in the early 19th century was called "the Athens of America," both for architecture like the Fairmount Watermarks and for being the birthplace of American democracy. The very name Philadelphia is derived from the Greek: philo meaning love and adelphos meaning brother. The word adelphos itself can be broken down further: a meaning from, and delphos meaning womb. From the same womb, or brothers (yes, yes, really siblings, city of brotherly and sisterly love). Biology tangent via Greece: the occasional opossum seen during its nocturnal Philadelphia excursions is North America's only native marsupial. Like all marsupials, it has a double or divided uterus, and has the Linnaean taxonomic name Didelphis virginiana.
Here is another Baldwin Park Greek celebrity who followed a similar odyssey as Theofanis Maltepes. The photo shows Athena Tacha, artist for Connections, visiting the Park in 2013.
Connections is her title for the two-acre stone and landscape creation that is the Park.
Athena was born in the town of Larissa, fifty miles south of the hometown of the Maltepes and born around the same time as Theofanis Maltepes. After her education in Athens, Oberlin College, and the Sorbonne she settled down in the United States in the late 1960s.
According to Athena, her father in Greece named her because "As Aristotle gave Alexander Achilles as his model, so I give you Athena as yours!" How Greek is that!
Welcome back, Rose Tattoo! Stop in, raise a glass, and give a hearty "Yamas," meaning "to your health," to the Maltepes, the Rose Tattoo and all your neighbors in this reborn corner saloon. As of May 20 it opens at 4 pm on Wednesday through Saturday.
June 2025