PHILADELPHIA Main Streets make a comeback at Chestnut Hill

Fran O'Donnell's grandfather was a chauffeur until people started driving their own cars and didn't need chauffeuring anymore. Then his father opened a stationery store. That lasted until Staples moved in. Now O'Donnell sells toys. Welcome to Main Street in Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill.

Half a century after the country's first enclosed shopping mall in Minnesota sounded the death knell for small town business districts everywhere, Main Streets are coming back.

No longer the corridors of commerce and industry they once were, Main Streets are reinventing themselves. They have shops with personality, restaurants with flair and unusual sights to see. Philadelphia and its countryside has some dandies.

As gas prices keep many travelers close to home, Main Streets like Chestnut Hill offer getaways that are novel, nearby and not too expensive. Plus, you can park your car and walk.

An urban enclave:

When he's not running O'Doodles, his "unplugged" toy store, O'Donnell is the Main Street manager for the historic Chestnut Hill neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia.

"This is an authentic community with a historic commercial corridor and local people who care," he told me as we lunched outdoors at the popular Solaris Grille. His bright red tie with a referee's whistle on it reflected his role. "We'd like to be a destination."

Although Chestnut Hill is within Philadelphia's city limits, you'd never know it. It's more like a village. Forbes magazine recently dubbed it one of the country's best "urban enclaves."

"Chestnut Hill began as a community between downtown Philadelphia and the hinterlands in the 1700s," Veronica Aplenc, director of the Chestnut Hill Historical Society, explained. "Merchants came out from the city and farmers came in from their fields to trade here."

Philadelphians grew to love the cool breezes. Chestnut Hill is the highest point in the city, bordering the Wissahickon Gorge, and people began to summer there. When railroads arrived in the 1840s, Philadelphia bankers and lawyers found it a posh, possible place to live year round....