PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Jim’s South St. will be a little bit bigger when it reopens later this year. After more than 45 years of being neighbors, the owner of Eye’s Gallery has agreed to sell her space to the cheesesteak shop.
Jim’s owner Ken Silver recently bought the colorful storefront next door after both businesses were devastated by a fire in July 2022.
“It’s been a rough six months and we still have a lot of work to do and a long road ahead of us,” he said. “But at least we can start to see some of the light at the end of the tunnel.”
The plan is to expand and add more seating, bathrooms and general space. And, Silver assures the famous mosaics on the store’s exterior, created by Philly’s own Isaiah Zagar, will remain.
“The mosaics can’t be taken out. They’re on the walls. I didn’t want them destroyed,” said Julia Zagar, Isaiah’s wife and owner of Eye’s Gallery for 53 years.
“It's 53 years — the whole renaissance of the new beginnings of the new South Street, it’s told in those mosaics,” she said.
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Most of the loss at Eye’s Gallery came from water damage. A few months after the fire, Julia Zagar said they realized they couldn’t get the building back to the way it was.
So when Silver offered to buy it — and preserve the original art — she agreed. In fact, Silver had floated the idea years ago.
“It had not been a secret that I let her know if there was ever a time that they wanted to get out of that business, please knock on my door first,” he said. “So we got together and it was like two old friends that discussed something forever, and there it was.”
They are definitely old friends. The Zagars knew Silver’s parents, the previous owners, and their children often played together.
Silver said the purchase was perfect timing — he had almost finished the contract to buy another building nearby when she called him. “We were going to be signing the document on that Friday and I think she reached out to me on Wednesday or Tuesday. It was very serendipitous.”
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But the expansion of Jim’s does not mean the end of Eye’s Gallery. Julia Zagar is moving the business down the street, to the 300 block of South Street. She aims to open in the spring.
“You rarely hug the person that you’re buying a building from at settlement,” said Silver. “And we did, and then we went and took pictures in front of the places, and it just felt right.”
He anticipates Jim’s will reopen over Labor Day weekend.
“Everybody’s like, well, it’s not going to look like Jim’s. No — it’s going to look like Eye’s Gallery, and that’s what we want it to look like,” he said. “It’s just a great merger of two iconic buildings.”