<body><div><p>From creeks to rivers to bays to the ocean, this region has what you want in waterside living. Here are 10 communities to check out.</p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=05OuXE_0wCtnLM800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=05OuXE_0wCtnLM800" width="900" height="600" ><figcaption>View of the Delaware River from the rear deck of Riverstone Lodge, a former artist’s home and studio in New Hope / Photograph via Addison Wolfe Real Estate</figcaption></figure><p>If you’d love to live on the water, the ideal home for you is a houseboat.</p><p>But even the fanciest houseboats lack the amenities and features that houses on land offer.</p><p>A riverside or lakeside house gives you all of those, as well as a dock for your boat. Or yacht, if you’re fortunate enough (and have a big enough dock). And if all you want is the sound of gently flowing water, you can also find that hereabouts (no boat required). Here are some of the best places for living on the water in the Greater Philly region.</p><h2>Bucks County</h2><h2>New Hope</h2><p>The region’s favorite adult playground sits right on the Delaware. Enter it from the south, as most people coming to it from Philadelphia do, and you first immerse yourself in a slew of restaurants, shops, bars, nightclubs and a famous theater.</p><p>Once you cross Bridge Street, the shops and eateries gradually give way to the residential part of Main Street. All of the houses to your right have backyards on the river, and many of those have boat docks extending from them. Most of the houses have been around for a while, but mixed in with the Colonials, Victorians, Foursquares, Queen Annes and Jazz Age Colonial throwbacks are a few newer standouts like this recently completed decked-out modern house or this recently built neotraditional manor. The celebrities who have been flocking here of late prefer to domicile in the farmhouses and manors further inland, so you won’t have to worry about their bidding up the prices should one of these riverside houses come on the market.</p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1yVj0y_0wCtnLM800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1yVj0y_0wCtnLM800" width="1200" height="934" ><figcaption>Brandywine Creek in Chadds Ford / Photograph by H. Mark Weidman Photography/Alamy Stock Photo</figcaption></figure><h2>Delaware County</h2><h2>Chadds Ford</h2><p>Artist Andrew Wyeth found his inspiration in the forests and farmsteads that line Brandywine Creek, and even though the suburbs have crept up to its border, Chadds Ford retains the look and character it had when Wyeth lived there. (Chadds Ford’s Brandywine Museum of Art has an extensive collection of art by members of the Wyeth family.)</p><p>Brandywine Creek is too small for active recreation, but those who find the sound of a flowing stream relaxing and soothing will want to seek out properties that line it.</p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0yMMit_0wCtnLM800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0yMMit_0wCtnLM800" width="900" height="600" ><figcaption>Houses along River Road in Gladwyne / Bright MLS image via RE/MAX Access</figcaption></figure><h2>Montgomery County</h2><h2>River Road, Gladwyne</h2><p>Of course, the houses that line River Road in Gladwyne are luxurious. But as befits houses that put their best faces towards the river, these houses aren’t showy the way many in Gladwyne proper are. But just about every one of them has a boat dock.</p><p>In fact, you may forget you live in Gladwyne if you buy here, for this strip of 45 or so houses sits along the Schuylkill, separated from the rest of Gladwyne by a railroad line and the Schuylkill Expressway. This means you get to live on river time rather than Main Line time. And that should be a big relief for you.</p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0ZtwxE_0wCtnLM800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0ZtwxE_0wCtnLM800" width="900" height="286" ><figcaption>Panoramic view of the Central Delaware riverfront; Piers 3 and 5 are in the center / Photograph by drnadig via Getty Images</figcaption></figure><h2>Philadelphia</h2><h2>Central Delaware riverfront</h2><p>The Delaware is mainly a working river, but the way it works is different than it was in the 1920s, when most of the municipal piers along the central Delaware riverfront were built. The cargo ships that once docked at those piers now load and unload shipping containers at two large terminals, one in South Philly and the other in the River Wards.</p><p>That left those finger piers empty until building recyclers got their hands on them. Two, Piers 3 and 5, now contain condominiums with balconies that look out on the river just north of Penn’s Landing. If you want to bring a boat with you, a marina sits next to Pier 5.</p><p>To Penn’s Landing’s south, The Residences at Dockside offer rental apartments in a building that resembles a cruise ship.</p><p>A little further north on Columbus Boulevard (which becomes Delaware Avenue at Spring Garden Street), the Waterfront Square condominium complex offers high-rise living next to the river. And further up, in the River Wards, two new developments offer their own twist on waterfront living. The Battery, a former PECO generating station, now contains apartments, a function hall, offices and a hotel next to Penn Treaty Park in Fishtown. And the 900-unit Northbank community offers townhouses, condos and apartments near the Girard Avenue interchange on I-95 in Port Richmond.</p><h2>Manayunk</h2><p>This neighborhood that resembles a European hill town also has one of the few places in the region where you can live on an island. Venice Island lies between the Manayunk Canal and the Schuylkill, and the onetime industrial site now contains both townhouse condos and apartments as well as a busy performing-arts and recreation center. Across the canal, you will find several apartment buildings overlooking the towpath.</p><h2>River Road, Shawmont</h2><p>Across the river from Gladwyne but nowhere near as exclusive, this River Road is so secluded you have to want to find it. And you’ll find it right where Nixon Street and Port Royal Avenue meet.</p><p>Most of the houses on this River Road are on its landward side, but a few fortunate homeowners have properties across the street. Many of these have docks or landings as well.</p><h2>Torresdale</h2><p>This is the only Philadelphia neighborhood other than the central waterfront that has residential property right on the Delaware. Two large garden apartment complexes, Water’s Edge and Delaire Landing, offer apartments for rent; the latter has a pool, tennis courts and a clubhouse right on the riverbank. Beacon Pointe, next to Water’s Edge, is a mid-rise apartment building, and the Bakers Bay condo community offers both garden-style and midrise units. All four of these abut the river.</p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1fSP1X_0wCtnLM800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1fSP1X_0wCtnLM800" width="900" height="600" ><figcaption>Modern houses on the Beach Thoroughfare, Margate’s back bay / South Jersey Shore Regional MLS image via BHHS Fox &amp; Roach Realtors</figcaption></figure><h2>South Jersey</h2><h2>Anywhere along the back bays at the Shore</h2><p>Sure, you could pay a king’s ransom for a Shore house on the beach in the communities stretching from Long Beach Island to Cape May. But why not buy a house right on the water for a princely sum instead?</p><p>All of the communities from Barnegat Light to Cape May Light have houses facing the various back bays, and very few of them lack boat docks. Those in Brigantine face the marshy islands that form the Absecon (state) Wildlife Management Area and the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. If you’d like a bayside house without the summer crowds, consider Strathmere in Upper Township, Cape May County. And budget-conscious buyers will want to check out the bayside houses on the mainland in places like Pleasantville and Somers Point.</p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3V383D_0wCtnLM800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3V383D_0wCtnLM800" width="900" height="675" ><figcaption>Houses on the Delaware Bay in Fortescue / Photograph by Sandy Smith</figcaption></figure><h2>Fortescue</h2><p>This sleepy village in Cumberland County offers a different Jersey Shore experience, as it sits on the Delaware Bay and is surrounded by marshes on three sides (the village is in the Fortescue Wildlife Management Area). The houses here are the most modest of any of the communities listed here, but if you love fishing, you will want to give this community a good, hard look.</p><p>Not many of the bayside houses have boat docks, but most have room to store boats, and there are marinas in town where you can store yours when not using it. It also looks like the last place you’d expect to find upscale fine dining at the Shore (bay or ocean), but you will find that at the Charlesworth Hotel and Restaurant on the main drag, Jersey Avenue.</p><h2>Sweetwater</h2><p>There’s nothing barren about the Pinelands, the largely unspoiled region spanning Camden and Atlantic counties that’s home to thick forests and cranberry bogs. Two scenic rivers, the Mullica and the Batsto, flow through this region. Because so much of the Pinelands consists of nature preserves, a huge state forest and wildlife management areas, opportunities to live along either river are few. If you’re lucky, however, you might be able to buy a house in this small community located where the Batsto flows into the Mullica a few miles downstream from historic Batsto Village.</p></div></body>

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Where to Live in the Philadelphia Region if You’d Love to Live on the Water

From creeks to rivers to bays to the ocean, this region has what you want in waterside living. Here are 10 communities to check out. If you’d love to live on the water, the ideal home for you is a houseboat. But even the fanciest houseboats lack the amenities...