Like many urban areas, Philadelphia is a city with a tremendous stock of historic housing which has fallen into disrepair. Damage from vandalism, fire, weathering and a lack of maintenance have left entire neighborhoods vacant and pose a continued threat to the city's historic landscape.

The Diamond Street properties is made up of 35 buildings that comprise more than one-third of the housing stock in a three-block area of North Philadelphia. Distinguished by their architectural character and unity of scale, these buildings represent the only continuous blocks of unbroken sandstone rowhouses facing each other in this part of the city.

Noble Preservation worked with property developers and architects to rehabilitate nearly three dozen rowhouses and creating more than 75 well-maintained low-income apartment units. Not only did the project establish much-needed affordable housing in an at-risk neighborhood, it also stabilized and preserved an extensive series of buildings which are characteristic of Philadelphia's 19th century streetscape and instilled a renewed sense of community pride in its residents.

The success of these efforts garnered the project a 1991 Historic Preservation Commendation from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission's Bureau for Historic Preservation.