By 2019, The Living Room had already earned a place on Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly list.
Philadelphia Magazine named The Living Room at 35 East its 2019 Best Small Music Venue. The short write-up praised the combination that defined the room: a familiar, almost living-room atmosphere paired with professional sound and a strong mix of local and touring artists.
The award belongs to the original Lancaster Avenue period and remains one of the clearest outside snapshots of how the venue was perceived at the time.
The appeal was the contrast: relaxed enough to feel personal, serious enough to make the music matter.
What the 2019 award actually captured
Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly archive did not praise size or spectacle. Its short description compared the room to a favorite hangout upgraded by a professional sound crew, with local acts and touring musicians sharing the program. That is a precise snapshot of the venue’s value proposition in 2019: intimacy without treating production as an afterthought.
The award also fixes the original address—35 East Lancaster Avenue—in the public record. That matters because later Living Room coverage belongs to the Cricket Avenue chapter. Keeping those locations distinct is one of the basic rules of this venue history.
The timeline begins with the 2018 opening record and continues through the 2022 move, giving the award a clear place rather than presenting it as a floating testimonial.
An outside description with unusual archival value
Awards blur into marketing when they are repeated without context. Here, the 2019 citation is useful because it describes the room itself: professional sound, close scale and a mix of local and touring musicians. Those details line up with the earlier opening coverage and give the archive a second independent description of the original Lancaster Avenue chapter. The 2018 opening page provides the best comparison.
Chapter sources