August 29, 2023
THOM CARROLL/for PhillyVoice
Jim's Steaks, the popular cheesesteak spot at 4th and South Streets, is set to reopen in late October after a fire shuttered the business in July 2022.
The sound of sizzling meat and onions will soon return to Fourth and South streets. The landmark cheesesteak spot Jim's Steaks is set to reopen its location there in late October, its owner said.
The sandwich shop has been closed since a two-alarm fire tore through the building in July 2022. In January, the owners of Jim's announced plans to reopen at some point in 2023 and shared mockups depicting a rebuilt store on Twitter. The exact timeline of its return was unclear until this week, when Jim's owner Ken Silver told the Inquirer that the cheesesteak shop was set to open by the end of October.
The new Jim's Steaks will reportedly be almost twice the size as it once was, with the sandwich shop expanding beyond its original footprint to include the former site of Eye's Gallery, which was also damaged in the fire that closed Jim's last summer.
The fire started on the morning of July 29, 2022 and raged for four hours until fire crews brought it under control early that afternoon. The structure of the building, which was built in 1900, was declared safe a few days after the fire, but Silver said at the time that it could take at least a year to rebuild.
In December of last year, Jim's tweeted photos of the charred, damaged interior of the store and noted that "there's a lot of work ahead" in terms of rebuilding and reopening the store.
Jim's South Street location first opened in 1976, nearly four decades after the original Jim's Steaks opened on North 62nd Street in West Philadelphia in 1939. That location still operates today, along with another Jim's Steaks in Springfield, Pennsylvania.
Hello, Beautiful!
— Jim's South St (@JimsSouthStreet) January 1, 2023
Happy New Year to you and yours. We're beyond thrilled to share some early plans for our rebuild. Can't wait to see you again in 2023!#thisishowitsdone #jimssouthstreet #southstreetphilly #happynewyear #philly #cheesesteaks #progress #epiccomeback pic.twitter.com/05ruh8nsCW
