When heavyweight champ Joe Frazier died last year, some people paid tribute at his Broad Street gym, where he lived and worked for decades. He'd sold the building a couple years before his death, and now it's up for sale again—along with the billboard on top. The building made the Preservation Society's 2011 list of Endangered Properties, with the following recommendation:
Frazier’s hopes of transforming the site into a boxing museum and community center were ultimately unrealized in his lifetime, but will remain a compelling vision as long as the building remains standing. Listing on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places would help protect the physical building while honoring one of the city’s great citizens. Journalist Daryl Gale, writing for the Philadelphia Tribune, also worried about the gym's fate:
The mighty Joe Frazier gym still sits there on the corner of Broad and Glenwood, except now it’s all but abandoned, used as some sort of discount furniture warehouse. Here’s what we do: First, restore the gym to its former glory. As much as the legendary Blue Horizon, or even the Uptown, Joe Frazier’s Cloverlay gym is a part of North Philadelphia history. · Listing: 2917 N Broad St. [craigslist]
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