moo.
Monthly Archives: March 2019
from the humble to the fairy tale fantastical: chester county needs more preservation of land and architecture.
Soledad Mansion, Exton, PA
I had all these photos from Chester County Day this past October that I had never edited. Life got busy, along came the holidays, and here we are, months later.
But I do not know that now is a bad time to be editing. Actually, I think it is the perfect time given my recent posts on preservation. And Chester County Day is the perfect tour day to go around the county and see what makes where we live so magnificent, so special, so worth preserving and fighting for.
Our architecture ranges from the humble to the classic farmhouse to the fantastical. We need to preserve this. We can’t continue to allow the hum drum homogenous plasticity of dense developments to continue to run rough-shod over our county.
If elected, appointed, and county planning officials aren’t going to help, we have to seek alternative means. For example, when will we see these crazy developer driven zoning overlays that walk, talk, and smell of spot zoning go away?
It’s hard. We stand up in our communities and we become targets. Literally targets. For defending what we love.
This afternoon, the Philadelphia Inquirer landed a whale of an article for 5 PM release online (give or take, as far as time goes.) It speaks to what people are going through. The article is about Lloyd Farm in Caln. The article describes in great detail what people in Caln are going through. And they are, of course, but one municipality dealing with these issues.
The Lloyd farmhouse is older than the nation. Caln Township residents are fighting for its survival.
by Vinny Vella, Updated: March 7, 2019- 4:29 PM
This article tells the tale that can be superimposed over many municipalities. East Goshen, West Chester, East Whiteland, West Whiteland, West Vincent, Upper Uwchlan, Westtown, Willistown, West Goshen, Caln…the list is as long as there are municipalities. Humble and affluent communities alike.
Going through these photos a few months later was like having fresh eyes. Some of my photos were of houses on the tour, others were of things I saw along the way. Things that break my heart like a development rising behind a corn field. It’s like a trick of the eye. It’s eerie.
Or what about the water in a fountain of a bucolic estate rising and falling in the fountain with an office park off in the background?
Where we used to see fields, we see development. Where we used to see fabulous 18th and 19th century Chester County farmhouses , we see development. Everywhere, we see development.
When I look at all the wonderful architecture that is representative of our county from the dawn of the American Revolution, to the industrial revolution, Victorian and Edwardian splendor, humble to fantastical and everything in between it is almost like you can’t breathe because it is SO spectacular. Then you can’t breath because every time you turn around something is being bulldozed and fields of cookie cutter samey same Tyvec wrapped homogenous architecture that won’t stand the test of time is rising up in its place. Have you ever visited one of these developments as they are being built? You can sometimes literally smell the plastic Lego Land of it all.
Our history and architectural heritage and open space can’t always belong to the bulldozer and the wrecking ball. Chester County deserves better.
Enjoy the photos. I sure did going through them again.
ghosts of houses abandoned on swedesford
This is the irony of Chester County today: these were marvelous little houses that faculty and staff of Church Farms School lived in once upon a time.
Then came developers and now they rot. Day by day, month by moth, year by year. No one does anything except sometimes mow the grass. These houses just sit there and fall apart.
But they were tough, well made houses in their day so I am guessing they haven’t rotted fast enough?
But with all the butt ugly development, these houses would have been welcomed once upon a time by families looking to live in Chester County. But oh no, along came the developers.
And they rot. And no municipality seems to care. Someday they will be an office park or a townhouse development.
#tbt gunkle spring mill in east whiteland
Yes…more life got in the way and I never posted these photos after Chester County Day in October and well…enjoy them now!
Gunkle Spring Mill is a very cool treasure in East Whiteland Township.
#tbt fall 2018: tredyffrin historic preservation trust house tour
File under when life got in the way. Yes, the photos I was supposed to post in September. From the Tredyffrin Historic Preservation Trust House Tour. Well I am in a #TBT kind of mood so enjoy:
#tbt my history with history
The photo above has me in the center. Circa 1976- 1977. It has just been too long that sadly, I don’t remember the exact date.
Where am I? At one of my favorite historic sites on earth. Historic Harriton House in Bryn Mawr. I think technically, my friends and I at the time, beat Chef Walter Staib into the kitchen there by a few decades.
When we first moved to the Main Line from Society Hill, I missed the history and old houses of Society Hill. Yes, I was kind of obsessed by old houses even then. So neighbors introduced our family to historic Harriton House. And as a related sidenote, Historic Harriton House is a remarkable story of preservation. I urge everyone to take the time to go visit. The site is a little slice of heaven.
Before we moved from the city to suburbia, I also did something kind of historically minded for a kid.
At 11, I was probably the youngest volunteer tour guide the Park Service ever had in Society Hill. I gave tours of the Todd House and Bishop White House. In Colonial garb with a little mob cap.
How? Well my parents knew Hobie Cawood. Mr. Cawood was the Superintendent of Independence National Historical Park from 1971-1991. I wrote about this before.
But this is just something I have always loved since I was a kid. Our history, our architecture, our old houses.
I am not a new house person. I am a preserve the old house person. It’s just the way I am made. I am a realist and I don’t think every old house can be saved, but I think a lot more can be saved then are actually being saved.
Whenever I have these conversations with anyone about historic preservation, I go back to my childhood in Society Hill. And the reason is simple: that area was a total slum when people like my parents as newlyweds bought wrecks of old houses in Society Hill for peanuts from the redevelopment authority in Philadelphia.
My parents and their friends restored these houses with architectural details and hardware and windows and woodwork from houses that were too far gone to save. And as kids, a lot of the time we went with our parents when they were visiting these wrecks of houses to see what they could salvage out of them. And salvaging then wasn’t so much a big business as it was sort of a neighbor helping neighbor collaborative. People would give you the stuff out of the houses being torn down. It was a very different time.
It was through these expeditions that I learned about things like shutter dogs. Busybody mirrors. Box locks and more. The details of historical architecture which have traveled with me throughout my life.
This is where my love of old houses began. And it has been a lifelong affair.
A lot of people don’t like my opinions. And I’m sorry they don’t share my love of old houses and history. But as Americans we have a magnificent history. And we can’t just keep bulldozing it away.
Thanks for stopping by.
gone but not forgotten
This old Chester County farmhouse was once considered historic. It was listed on a historic inventory too.
And it was demolished anyway for development. In 2018 in East Whiteland Township.
The house was on Bacton Hill Road across from the mobile home community and the ruins of Ebenezer AME Church and cemetery.
But hey, no biggie, just another dead and buried farmhouse in Chester County, right? After all, they are developing all of the farm land so who needs an old farmhouses right?
what a difference a year or two makes in west whiteland
Ashbridge house in Exton. 2017.
I took the above photo of Ashbridge House located in West Whiteland at Exton Main Street in Exton in 2017.
It’s been mothballed for years in plastic since the mall was built. It’s another Chester County property with quite the history.
They even have a sign up in Exton Main Street about it:
Supposedly this house is being restored. I don’t know exactly which decade that’s going to occur in however, do you? I found this 2017 West Whiteland Planning Commission document (CLICK HERE) which indicates it would be preserved in the middle of hundreds of new apartments. (Also check out the Daily Local Article from May, 2017 and a blurb on the WCHE website from the same time.)
Hundreds. Because you know there aren’t enough apartments and townhouses and carriage houses being built in West Whiteland Township now are there?
That’s crazy. Obviously it was approved. Click HERE to see a list of developments in various stages in West Whiteland. Suffice it to say, I thought the list of developments in East Whiteland were bad enough. And I can’t say for sure that these lists are current as to what development is planned where.
But I digress.
Here we are in March, 2019 right? So a couple of weeks ago I guess it is now, I was over at Exton Main Street with my husband. I can tell you I was stunned by the way Ashbridge House and the outbuildings looked.
Ashbridge House in Exton. 2019.
When exactly is the preservation going to finally begin? Is it just me or do others of you out there think it’s never going to happen and someday will just hear how the house mysteriously fell down?
Ashbridge House in Exton. 2019.
I just don’t understand. I don’t understand why people no longer seem to care about historic preservation in a county that used to be known for it.
If you are interested in Ashbridge house, I have found a couple videos:
Janice Early’s terrific history video
Abandoned Steve Adventures 2013 video
Ashbridge House in Exton. 2017 or 2018.
chester county memories
I got a comment into my blog today concerning the historic rotting house you see above. It is located on the Clews and Strawbridge property in Malvern on Lancaster Avenue in East Whiteland.
Here is the comment:
I remember when the now abandoned house next to Clews and Strawbridge was occupied by the Clews family (1970). Their daughter Sylvan was one of my closest friends. The home was filled with art and antiques, as Sylvan’s father, Mancha, was the son of a noted sculptor, and her mother Margaret ( a member of the family that founded the Strawbridge and Clothier department store), was a painter. I lost touch with Sylvan, but was somewhat amused that when I met my current husband years later, he was living almost directly across the street from that house, in Westgate Village. Now, I pass that house on my way to work almost every day, and often think about what it was like when the family lived there (and I wonder what creatures might currently be in residence, from bats to squirrels?)
This is another house that is part of Chester County’s architectural history that is just being allowed to rot.
Apparently in this county they can only build new these days. And isn’t that pathetic?
And did you know the Chester County Planning Commission has someone whose sole job has to do with the history… a “Heritage Preservation Coordinator.”
I have to wonder do they realize all the structures are out there? And do they care?
To the residents of Chester County: As someone who is somewhat new to your ranks even after a few years, I love the stories don’t stop telling them to me.
tragic photos of the desecration of lloyd farmhouse
Submitted by Anthony, a photographer
A blog reader named Anthony has sent in this marvelous set of photos of Lloyd Farm’s farmhouse I posting here. It is all so tragic. Before I load up the photos, please enjoy this summary history courtesy of Chester Couny Author Historian and Artist, Catherine Quillman:
Lloyd Farm, also known as Valley Brook Farm, has been a community landmark that has spanned generations of change in the Downingtown/Caln Township region. The farm itself sits one of the last remaining parcels from a William Penn land grant dating to 1651 .
According to a Chester County architectural inventory listing historic resources, this former “estate farm” is comprised of stone farmstead with a 18th-century core and 19th-century alternations and additions of exceptional architectural style. It is one of the few area properties that has retained much of its original plantings and specimen trees as well as its open space and historic landscape, complete with a tree-lined long entrance way and a circular drive with a mounting block at the front of the house.
The nearby historic one-lane Lloyd Bridge spanning the Beaver Creek and Lloyd Park, a 30-acre “dog” park given by the Lloyd family to Caln Township in 1969, have added to property’s community status as a beloved landmark.
As a virtual theater of Chester County’s history, Lloyd Farm has adapted through the years. Its early ownership reflects the region’s influx of Irish Quaker immigrants from the 1720s to 1750s; the 19th century local industries that included farming, dairying, and quarrying; and the era of the “gentleman” farm when it was owned by William McClure Lloyd, a Harvard graduate and Philadelphia stockbroker.
Lloyd’s great grandfather, John K Eshleman, a physician and botanist, made the Lloyd Farm famous as one of the few documented sites on the “Underground Railroad.” Eshleman, who began helping escaped slaves in 1840 while living in Lancaster County, became a key “stationmaster” after he moved to Caln in 1848 and joined other Quaker neighbors to form what has been called the “northern” route through Chester County.
Also of note are videos out there on Lloyd Farm:
Lloyd Farm and what is happening in Caln should be a wake-up call to preservationists and residents throughout Pennsylvania, not just Chester County.
Historic Preservation can’t just be a cute pair of buzzwords, they have to mean something. And in order for it to mean something changes have to occur in a top-down approach starting in Harrisburg with the laws that govern us.
We need a complete overhaul of the Municipalities Planning Code, that archaic outdated state-level bible that guides the planning and zoning within our individual communities throughout the state whether we want it to or not.
This state level bible, the Municipalities Planning Code, has not been comprehensively updated in too damn long. (There were some 2007 updates you can look at here.) They need to re-define historic preservation, land preservation, open space preservation, suburbs, and exurbs just to name a few things which come to mind.
Furthermore, our elected official even on the most local of levels through to Harrisburg and Washington DC should serve their constituencies, not special interest groups, and not their own political ambitions. If they cannot accomplish that, as we are seeing in Caln Township now and elsewhere, they need to be replaced.
We are losing on a daily basis what makes Chester County so special. We are losing land, we are losing our amazing architecture, we are losing history, our equine and agricultural traditions as we are losing the very farms that put food on our tables!
Lloyd Farm’s farmhouse could still be saved, but I don’t think it will be. We need to learn from this and act. And that starts with changing the faces of those who govern us. Wherever we live, we deserve government representation that fights for the residents, supports the residents.
I also think our county planning commission should have a Chester County resident as it’s executive director and at present, it does not. Someone who doesn’t live here, doesn’t get it.
Finally of note, the historic Witmer’s map of Caln:
