By the time I got to the U.S. Naval Home in Grays Ferry on Tuesday, the fire trucks had gone and the rain was coming down. My shoes kept getting stuck in the muck and mud as I walked around the ruined building. What a mess it was.

The night before, someone had set fire to Biddle Hall, the home's stately main building. The flames crept up an exterior wall, gained a toehold in the wooden roof trusses, and made a dash across the roof line. The blaze got to five alarms before it was stopped.

Even with the rain, a burnt-match smell permeated the place. Long stretches of the tin roof had collapsed. In others, it was intact but askew, like a cheap toupee.

Damn, I thought as I thwucked through the mud. How did it get to this?

Five years before, I had spent a night in the church hall just across Grays Ferry Avenue, listening to the grand plans Toll Brothers Inc. had for the site.

I wrote a story with this lead: "Can a developer who specializes in suburban tract housing find happiness in the gritty city, building townhouses and apartment buildings to be nestled around a national historic landmark? The tentative answer is yes."

So much for my predictive powers. Not a shovel of dirt has been turned since.

Nothing happened

Terry Gillen, the area's Democratic ward leader, said neighbors are mad enough to spit. They've been living with promises for nearly 30 years. And now what happens? Not renewal, but ruin.

Toll Brothers bought the property from the federal government in 1982 for a song: $1.2 million for 20 acres. But the deal had strings. The company had to agree to preserve and protect Biddle Hall and the adjacent physician's and the superintendent's houses.

The compound on the 2400 block of Grays Ferry Avenue, opened in 1827, was the first U.S. Naval Academy. Later, it was a home for retired and infirm Navy sailors. It closed in 1976.

To some, the building is a treasure, to others a nuisance. Toll Brothers falls into the second category. At various times, it has proposed tearing down some or all the buildings.

The company seems flummoxed by the challenges of urban development - the unions, the pols, the cranky neighbors, the preservationists, standing in the way of maximizing profits.

That's why I was hopeful when Mayor Ed Rendell hammered out the 1998 agreement. Everyone gave a bit to make the deal happen.

And then nothing happened. Why? I asked Kira McCarron of Toll Brothers. Her e-mailed response:

"Over the years, we have done many marketing studies and worked with numerous consultants and contractors to create various plans for the site that we believed would be acceptable to government agencies. To date, none has proven economically feasible. We are still actively seeking an... alternative."

Demo by neglect

Preservation groups have always suspected Toll Brothers' true agenda was to sit on the site until someone, someday, let it tear down the buildings - or they fell down.

In the summer, city inspectors drew up a series of violations notices, citing the company for "demolition by neglect" - ignoring maintenance, letting security at the site lapse.

City officials are sending strong signals that they will not allow the fire to become an excuse to demolish. On Friday, they hired an engineering firm to report on Biddle Hall.

The Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections' own reading is that there was no serious structural damage. As L&I's Bob Solvibile told me: "That building was built to withstand an atomic bomb, before there was an atomic bomb."

I think a case should be made that Toll Brothers has violated its covenant to preserve and protect the Naval Home, the fire being only the latest example.

In turn, this could be used as a wedge to get the company to cede or sell the site to someone who is willing and able to develop it.

So, I offer this message to Toll Brothers: It's been 21 years since you bought the site, guys. Twenty-one years and we're still stuck in the muck. It's time to move on.