Devil's Pocket is a small

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

in the South Philadelphia section of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. The neighborhood, bordered by Christian and LeCount streets, Grays Ferry Avenue, and the Naval Square development (the former U.S. Naval Asylum), consists of rowhouses tucked near an industrial landscape near the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map(). accessed April 1, 2011. from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Pottsville ...

. A historically Irish-American neighborhood, Devil’s Pocket has seen real estate development and

gentrification Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a neighborhood changes through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents (the "gentry") and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has ...

in recent years, including a major expansion of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. According to one legend, Devil's Pocket got its name after a priest said the local youth were rough enough to steal from the

devil A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conce ...

’s pocket. The 1983 novel ''God's Pocket'' by Pete Dexter and its later 2014 film adaptation are set in the fictional South Philadelphia neighborhood of God's Pocket, which is based on the real-life Devil's Pocket and its tough, working class reputation.

References

Neighborhoods in Philadelphia Irish-American neighborhoods Southwest Center City, Philadelphia {{PhiladelphiaPA-geo-stub