Four-Alarm Blaze in Vacant Building Ruled Arson by Philadelphia Fire Marshals
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(TNS)
Jun. 11—The Philadelphia Fire Marshal's Office has ruled that a four-alarm fire that gutted a vacant West Philadelphia apartment building over the weekend was deliberately set, and the police department's Southwest Detectives Division has opened an arson investigation.
The blaze broke out around 5 a.m. Saturday at the Admiral Court apartment complex, a four-story eyesore at 48th and Locust Streets that had been neglected for several years by notorious landlord Phil Pulley.
More than 150 firefighters and support personnel responded to the scene, bringing the fire under control in about two hours. No injuries were reported. About 750 residents temporarily lost power.
Admiral Court has been vacant since Pulley evicted all residents in 2018 to make way for what he said at the time was a sale.
The sale didn't happen.
Instead, Pulley took out a $25 million mortgage on the property and an adjacent complex, called Dorsett Court, which is also vacant. Records show Pulley has since defaulted on the loan, which ostensibly was for construction work. The low-rise buildings have continued to deteriorate, racking up a slew of violations from the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections.
Building inspectors have cited Admiral Court 33 times since 2018, including several fire code violations in 2022. The building most recently failed reinspection in March 2025.
It was unclear Tuesday who currently owns the gutted property.
City spokespersons said Tuesday that, according to their records, Admiral Court is still owned by a limited partnership affiliated with Pulley and his property management company, SBG Management. The partnership purchased the property in 2004.
But multiple representatives for Pulley said the Admiral Court property had been sold. Court records show that a company based in the Cayman Islands called Descartes Specialty Finance pursued Pulley's company in court after it defaulted on the $25 million mortgage in 2023.
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, whose district includes the abandoned apartment buildings, said the city needs to do a better job of holding Pulley and other landlords accountable.
"Whether there are 100 tenants in a building or zero, landlords have a responsibility to maintain their properties to the standards mandated by law," Gauthier said in a statement.
"I am angry that the slumlord owner of this building ignored very serious safety concerns," Gauthier said, "and that the City of Philadelphia did not compel them to fix the property even though it had several L&I violations, including fire safety ones."
On Monday, the smell of smoke still lingered in the neighborhood. Bits of charred rubble had fallen onto the sidewalk of Locust Street near a crossing guard for children at Henry C. Lea Elementary School.
Clarice Cook, who lives across the street from Admiral Court, said the smoke was so thick Saturday morning that it drifted into her building.
"It was huge," Cook said of the fire. "I'm just really thankful for the fire department."
Cook and her boyfriend, Josh Hall, said they had often wondered why Admiral Court has remained vacant, especially in a poor city facing a housing crisis.
"You can tell it has good bones because it's still standing," Hall said, looking down 48th Street at the blackened structure. "They don't build them like that anymore."
The fire is only the latest sign that Pulley's real estate empire in crumbling.
In 2022, his Lindley Towers apartment building, in North Philly, partially collapsed — displacing about 100 residents — and was later condemned. Today, Lindley remains a vacant husk. The city is seeking to bill Pulley's companies for its demolition.
The following year, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office filed a consumer-protection suit against Pulley and his companies, including SBG Management, accusing them of "deplorable conduct." Then-Attorney General Michelle Henry said SBG "neglected the safety and basic human needs of their tenants, then thought they could intimidate those who spoke up by imposing unfair retaliatory fees."
That case is ongoing.
In September 2024, Fannie Mae, a government-controlled mortgage financier, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Pulley-affiliated real estate companies defaulted on seven mortgages for properties in Philadelphia and Delaware County. That suit claims those companies owe $59 million on loans and an additional $1.2 million in interest, which was growing daily by $6,600.
The following month, in October 2024, part of the Darrah School Apartments parapet wall came crashing down on the city's Francisville neighborhood, showering the street and sidewalk with bricks. The Inquirer later reported that Pulley had failed to submit the required facade inspections to the city.
The Darrah School building is still marked as "imminently dangerous" and failed a follow-up inspection by city building inspectors in May.
In January, Pulley was sentenced to three years' probation and 100 hours of community service for voter fraud. He admitted casting ballots in several different counties in the 2020 and 2022 federal elections.
U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg found Pulley's verbal apology in court so insincere that he required him to write a letter with a more "introspective" explanation for why he decided to falsely register and vote in Philadelphia, Montgomery County, and Broward County, Fla., where he has a waterfront house and a yacht.
Pulley did submit the letter, according to his defense attorney, Brian McMonagle. In a separate filing that month, Pulley requested the judge's permission "to travel to the Galápagos Islands and Ecuador" in mid-May. McMonagle said the trip did not happen, due to Pulley's health issues.
Last month, Pulley pleaded guilty to state charges for voting in both Philadelphia and Montgomery County in the 2021 and 2023 municipal elections.
Inquirer staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.
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