Even down in the land of ostentatious McMansions and Nouveau Main Line behaviors, there are abandoned farmhouses. After all, the history of Gladwyne can’t completely be obliterated, can it? Mills and farms were a big part of the early industry that made the area prosper.
As seen from Schuylkill Expressway. It is in Gladwyne. I have wondered about this house for decades. It has, to the best of my knowledge, been boarded up my entire life.
It is nearly impossible to get photos, it just depends how fast traffic is moving and what time of year it is. I was able to fire off a few photos as a passenger in a car recently. Not my best efforts, sorry. Soon the green will engulf all around this little red farmhouse and it will disappear from highway view until fall and winter.
If you look at photo in top of post, the front door is clearly open. Lower Merion Township has since secured the open door. Lower Merion has also gained permission to demolish the house from a judge in Montgomery County over the past couple of weeks.
Chester County, specifically West Chester Borough residents will remember Lower Merion’s Township Manager. He did a movin’ on up like The Jeffersons…Ernie McNeely.
I do not know how exactly you get to this farmhouse. But hopefully someone figures it out and gets the property properly secured. I do not know if the house is 18th century or early 19th century.
If anyone knows the exact location and any history of this house, please leave a comment.
A reader sent in:
From Lower Merion’s “Listing Of Properties In The Historic Resources Inventory”
1805 Youngs Ford Rd
Date of Construction: ca. 1851-1871
Original Architect:
Original Owner: Howard Wood
Description of the Resource: This vernacular frame farmhouse was built sometime between 1851 and 1871 at the end of Youngs Ford Road next to the Schuylkill River Expressway. In the 1870s, the house and the 90-acre property belonged to Thomas Rose. By 1896 the property was divided among other adjacent parcels and the building belonged to Howard Wood, owner of the nearby “Camp Discharge.” Wood and his descendents owned the house and much of the surrounding property until the 1930s. From 1937 onwards, the property gradually developed into subdivisions or was preserved by the Township. The house is two stories with a side gabled roof and a full-length, shed-roof porch. The front façade, which faces southwest, is asymmetrical and comprised of five bays. The one-story porch shades the entrance, located in the center of the front façade. A chimney rises along the exterior of the façade, near the southeastern end of the building. A detached, one-story, two-bay garage is also located on the property. (8/2012) Early Frame house (1896 atlas: Howard Wood). (88) Red frame early farmhouse adjacent to Schuylkill Expressway.