So West Whiteland has realtors on their historic commission and I know they want the house saved. I wish they could find a preservation buyer that could budge the demolition by neglect owners off of the property before it is too late.
There was a rumor a few months ago that someone once again was interested in buying the house but guess like all the other attempts, the demolition by neglect owners didn’t go through with it?
There are also a couple of trees in really bad shape.
The place has zero security it seems like and does the place look safe and secured?
West Whiteland has that property maintenance code, right? Maybe they can sit on the owners to NOT just let this gem rot?
We went today to the Sales by Helen sale in Kennett Square on 640 N. Walnut Rd. We got there late – there were things I wanted that were garden related but it was just too hot to move earlier.
I think it was like a horde of locusts descended upon the sale because the place was pretty stripped when we got there, which was fine because I don’t need anything REALLY, but I did want to see the property which was AMAZING!
The house is not a 19th or 18th or even early 20th century Chester County farmhouse. It was built in 1973 and the barn was built in 1998. (Here is listing while it exists.)
I marvel at this crazy beautiful property because it was built in exacting detail to look old and to be utterly Chester County. Not a McMansion of plastic or bad stucco, but a stunningly beautiful place. It looks old, yet it’s perfectly modern and turn key. You could move right in.
I got a basket full of red napkins for Christmas, mostly Ralph Lauren. And a couple of bars of expensive craft soap in their wrappers, a porriger, a wee Santa and an old tiny china doll for the Christmas tree….for $10!
But again, the best part was seeing this spectacular property on conserved land. Just shows what can be built. Imagine if developers trampling Chester County had actual talent and imagination? We might get more of this and fewer McUglies.
First I will start with somewhere under ALL of this mess is supposedly a house built in 1890. It was bastardized in the 1960s. I wonder what it originally looked like? Someone had said it was possibly a stable or livery originally, so an adaptive reuse would be normal for modern living but LOOK at what neighbors have to literally look at today?
I went looking in ChesCo Views to see who owned the property and obviously it’s an investor or investment group. There are a few properties involved.
Here’s what I found in public records:
Dilapidated property
I don’t have all the details but I asked around and apparently 32 Waterloo was part of an original plan for an office building?
Local scuttlebutt has it that they weren’t actually able to do what they originally wanted to do. So houses that they owned were rehabbed and rented out I have been told.
So here’s an excerpt from a 2008 article in Main Line Media News (you know back when our local news was actually reported by our local papers and not disemboweled by hedge funds):
Anger was the word of the evening – or at least the most memorable word – at Tuesday night’s Easttown Planning Commission meeting when Michael McNulty, who is applying for land-development and conditional-use permits for the proposed Waterloo Complex on his property in Berwyn, became upset with the commissioners and stormed out of the room.
Because only two members of the Planning Commission attended Tuesday’s meeting, there was no quorum, and it was unclear why the absent members did not show.
However, chairman Mitch Shiles and commissioner Joe Tamney stayed to hear requests and presentations from community members.
OK so apparently this guy McNulty’s entity still owns these properties correct? I just pulled the records today off of ChesCo views, right? So it kind of makes me laugh because it’s almost like when people threaten to leave a Facebook page or a Facebook group, but they never do?
I remembered when all of this was happening at the time I just never knew what happened to it as an issue until someone posted a picture of 32 Waterloo Ave. over the weekend.
Back to local scuttlebutt. Somewhere along the line, thank heavens, plans for an office building in the middle of Berwyn‘s historic village fell apart. Now, if I recall correctly, when this first started, some of the people in Berwyn came to us at the then Save Ardmore Coalition (now defunct) to ask us how we organized. I also seem to remember now that I’ve started digging back into this that this was covered at the time on the Save Ardmore Coalition blog because we did cover other areas. And at that point the site had multiple bloggers.
So I found all the articles that exist on coverage of this issue of these properties being consolidated for an office building in Berwyn’s historic village. What I was told by locals is that at some point after all of this, the man that owned the properties fixed up all the others and rented them out.
However this one property at 32 Waterloo Avenue has something wrong. I don’t know what the deal is but sitting like this you know something happened right?
So Easttown what is the deal? Intentional blight? Demolition by neglect? It’s also concerning because this is an area of Berwyn that has a lot of investment properties. And if one gets to slide by on subpar standards of property upkeep, the others might follow? Or one would think a real estate holding company like Eadah, that takes reasonably decent care of their properties and has property in that neighborhood might also be bothered by this ?
I honestly don’t know what’s going on, but I will close with a little montage of Google Earth photos of this property at different times over the years.
A friend of mine sent me a photo they took quite recently of SunTop in Ardmore. It looks like it’s under construction again? Correcting past mistakes? Or maintenance?
SunTop places have had fires over the years, but I have not heard of any for years have you? It’s very weird the way Frank Lloyd Wright houses all over the country have had fires over the years. And this location is no exception. The first one at SunTop was 1941.
I’ve checked with someone I know in the area and they thought there was no fire of a recent vintage, but these houses have required repairs etc. especially since some of the restoration might not have been historically accurate or in some cases, interior rooms were rearranged like I read in an old article.
So it looks like restoration is what is happening with this house and then I found similar on Google of all places with a note to respect someone’s property.
SunTop is a Frank Lloyd Wright creation that has had a complicated history at best with Lower Merion Township.
It as called “the Ardmore experiment” was built in 1939 as a potential solution for multi family housing. One of the units had a fire in 1941, but wartime shortages during World War II meant repairs didn’t happen.
Of course, Lower Merion being Lower Merion rewrote their codes, and SunTop suddenly became non conforming as a use in a single family zone in 1951. Ironic considering all the multi family cram plans they approve in the present, right? Sorry had to say that as it has given me a chuckle looking at this.
An owner in the 1950s of SunTop was denied a zoning variance in 1957 to restore the fire damaged property. Finally in 1965 a zoning was amended or something so restoration could occur. It seems like in 1989 another renovation occurred to correct mistakes from the 1960s. In 2003 there was another renovation judged from media reports.
They are actually super cool houses and were ahead of their time. They just don’t seem particularly durable. The only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Malibu, CA burned down in 2018 wildfires.
Now my friend who did the SunTop drive by recently, loves the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. He has tried to see as many of Wright’s structures as possible over time. SunTop appears in a catalog he has devoted to the homes.
So I was never a huge Frank Lloyd Wright aficionado but I have always been intrigued by what he had the foresight to see in Ardmore, PA. Their design works for multi family housing. Imagine if something like this could ever be designed instead of the awful rape of the land we see now.
The thing about Wright’s designs is much like Wharton Esherick, his designs involved and seemingly enveloped nature. Both Esherick and Wright also have things in common with George Nakashima and his legacy – furniture and buildings on his property. I think Nakashima’s furniture is beautiful and I have always wished I would find an Esherick print at a garage sale.
It has been a long, long time since I wrote about Shiloh. Shiloh is a sad story: a cemetery where the headstones and remains of an extraordinarily important AME church were bulldozed away in Westtown because a former property owner wanted to. But all the souls and remains of the dead are still there. The current property owner is also seemingly uninterested in the history and the languishing dead in now unmarked graves, which is sad.
Today between 11 AM and 1 PM on the steps of the old Chester County Courthouse at 21 West Market Street there is a ceremony to honor the 14 AME soldiers still on site at what use to be Shiloh AME in Westtown. It’s funny, I mentioned to an advocate for this site that this would be the perfect location a few weeks ago to get attention to the history languishing.
You are invited! Please Share.The Forgotten USCTs of Shiloh AME Church & Cemetery: A Day of Honor and Memory
Saturday, May 25, 2024, 11AM – 1 PM
In front of the Historic Chester County Courthouse
21 West Market Street
West Chester, PA 19380
FREE – Open to the Public!
Presented by the Friends of Shiloh AME Church and Cemetery
Featuring:
o Rev. Dr. Richelle Forman Gunter, Associate Minister
St. Paul’s Baptist Church, West Chester
o Speaker – Dr. Cheryl Renée Gooch, author of
Hinsonville’s Heroes: Black Civil War Soldiers of Chester County, Pennsylvania
o Robert Ford USCT 54th Massachusetts Co. B, Reenactor
o Speaker – Dr. Tonya Thames Taylor, Professor of History West Chester University
o Representative Headstones of 14 United States Colored Troops (USCTs)
Buried at Shiloh
o Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
More Information Attached:
– Shiloh AME brochure
– Inquirer Op-Ed, Friday, May 17, 2024,
“Black Civil War veterans in an abandoned Chester County cemetery deserve a memorial”
JOIN US!
shilohAMEfriends@gmail.com
It’s hallowed ground treated in the most unhallowed way. This happens far too often. Could this space be saved and properly remembered? Yes, but the current property owner doesn’t want people on his property. It’s sad but that is his choice.
It just gives you pause. There are 140 graves that never moved when the church closed in the 1920s and a subsequent but not current owner bulldozed the crumbling remains of the church built in 1817 was bulldozed in the 1960s. Think about it, the AME Church was only about 23 years old when this was built and slavery was not yet abolished. This is truly one of the earliest AME sites in the same state where the AME church was founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia. This site pre-dates Ebenezer in Frazer on Bacton Hill Rd.
I tried to write about Shiloh in 2016 when I was told that there was going to be a cleanup of the site. I was invited to it. Yet when I wrote a post people freaked out. So I killed the post and haven’t said boo since.
Only ONE grave survived thanks to a neighbor.
These hallowed grounds matter. People’s ancestors are buried there. Here’s hoping Westtown can get the property owner to come around.
My photo from a Westtown Day either 2016 or 2017 at Oakbourne.
400 Leopard Road. It’s on the corner of Sugartown Road and Leopard Road. There are a lot of houses around here that I love and this has always been one of my favorites. I think it was part of an estate I just can’t remember which one but it’s all in that general vicinity where Tarleton is and everything else.
If this house probably didn’t have close to 2 foot stone walls, it probably wouldn’t still be standing.
This old Redfin listing shows you what it looked like when it was for sale a few years ago:
I know work was being done on it but I just have to ask. Was this an accident? I’m not a fire expert, but it sure makes you wonder given how horrible the flames were shown on TV, right?
I was by this house quite recently on my way to Penn Medicine in Radnor for a medical appointment and I saw a coming soon sign that showed up on one of the reports. I looked up the realtor and they’re out of Delaware, which is a little far afield for the Main Line. With all the really good realtors to choose from on the main line, I am surprised that guy would be listing a property like this.  except now, I’m guessing this guy is out a listing 
I can tell you that if this house didn’t have almost 2 foot thick stone walls, it wouldn’t be standing today. But I hope this is actually investigated and not just swept under the carpet, because Easttown tends to sweep things under the carpet that they find uncomfortable.
This was such an incredibly interesting, and I think beautiful house. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but I love this house I have always loved driving by it, and I hope it rises from the ashes.
Sign me wondering if where there is smoke there is fire and not just a house fire? I think this is suspicious as hell.
If anyone has photos from today, feel free to message my blog’s Facebook page. I am also interested in publishing the history of this, so if any of you history, buffs, have old photos of this property, and can tell me what estate it was part of or its history I would also be appreciative.
3:00 PM 5/4/24 Update from Elizabeth Gaul who grew up in the house:
My family lived in Breeze Hill from 1963-1984. We are saddened by the news of this devastating fire and hope it will be feasible to salvage it. It was a truly wonderful place to grow up.
A correction, if I may, regarding its history. Our late mother, who taught history at AIS Lower School for 30+ years, would want the record straight:
No enslaved persons ever hid in the house. It was built several years post-Civil War so that would be impossible.
The staircase in question is a back stairway, which was a fairly typical feature for a larger home of this period. Not at all hidden, although part of it was blocked off to create a linen cupboard. We used it regularly. The third floor attic also had another entrance to it off the main staircase.
*Photo is of Breeze Hill from Sugartown Road, circa 1900. Note the windmill, which served to pump water from the spring house to the main house. When we lived there, that water still supplied the house, but via electric pump.
4:00 PM Update: thanks to realtor Tracy Pulos we have the history of the house – also note, this would be somebody far more appropriate than the guy on the sign to have sold his house:
Here is a history of this property which was given to me by a past owner. The address was 1226 Sugartown Rd. for many years, vs. 400 Leopard Rd. (address was changed to the side street vs. main street within the past 10 years.)
This lovely, historic Easttown Township residence was constructed by Joseph W. Sharp for his younger sister, Rachel, in 1864-1865, right at the end of the Civil War. Born in 1828 in Philadelphia, Sharp was the eldest son of Joseph Sharp and Hannah Lindsay. A successful Quaker wool merchant, the elder Mr. Sharp purchased approximately 250acres in Easttown prior to his untimely deathin 1848. In the absence of will disposing of his assets, the Easttown property was split equally among his four children, Joseph W., Rachel and two younger sons. As theeldest, Joseph W. also inherited his father’s business. Over the next few years, Joseph purchased the other three portions of his father’s original holdings from his three siblings, paying them, according to historical records, fair market value for their property. As both Joseph and Rachel were unmarried at this time, Rachel residedwith Joseph and was the mistress of his household. By 1857,Joseph had attained considerable success andconstructed an imposing Victorian country estate “Hawthorne,” which has been restored andis located at 521 Leopard Road in Berwyn, just down the street from Breeze Hill. Joseph went on to become a leaderin Berwyn, contributing tothe establishment of numerous civic organizations and was one of the founders of the Berwyn National Bank. He was thefirst gentleman to commute from Berwyn into Philadelphia each dayutilizing the newly-constructed “Main Line” train, and was a partner in what is now Hajoca Corporation, an earlyleader in the nascent indoor plumbing industry. In 1865, Joseph married Sidney Serrill Bunting. Oral family history indicates that Sidney and Rachel did not get along well, so Joseph commenced the construction of Breeze Hill (so named for its location and the presence of a refreshing breeze during this non-air conditioned era) for Rachel some time before his wedding. As the home wason theSharp family property, it didnot receive a separate deed at the timeof construction, but is shown on Pennsylvania Railroad maps dating to 1873. Already on the property was a two-story stone spring house, the top floor of which was occupied by tenant farmers on the estate. It is believed that this structure was built in 1837 and the spring provided a supply of clean water for the main house. The four car garage/carriage house was originallyconstructed as a barn, alsobefore 1865; careful examination of the walls inside show signs of stalls and a ladder to the full, second floor which was surely originally used as a hayloft. Local historical records indicate that Leopard Road was a well-travelled path on the Underground Railroad. Previous owners of Breeze Hill found evidence of a hidden stairway in a second-floor bedroom that led to a third floor space inaccessible by any other means, which lends credence to that fact that the property was a stop for slaves fleeing the South. Rachel Sharp and other family members lived at Breeze Hill until 1888. When Joseph Sharp’s eldest daughter, Mary Bunting Sharp, married William Morris of Villanova in 1888, the young couple moved into Breeze Hill, where they lived until 1942. Joseph Sharp and his wife subdivided Breeze Hill from their larger property and deeded it to their daughter for “$1 and her natural love and affection” in 1901, when it became legal for a married woman to own property in her own name in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Either Mary’s parents were trying to keep the property in the Sharp family or didnot particularly like their son-in-law– who knows?) Since the departure of the Sharp family, numerous owners have made changes and improvements to Breeze Hill to bring it to its current condition as a thoroughly charming modern family home. It retains the large deep windowsills created by the 18” solid stone walls, 5 fireplaces, beautiful moldings and vintage touches that bespeak its historic origins, but boasts a cook’s kitchen, five bathrooms, an enormous light-filled family room and great flow for entertaining
This weekend is, at long last, the spring barn sale at Life’s Patina in Malvern!
SPRING BARN SALE DATES: Friday, April 26th: 10am to 7pm Saturday, April 27th: 10am to 5pm Sunday, April 28th: 10am to 4pm
I previewed it yesterday, and it was amazing!
1750 N. Valley Road, Malvern, PA
Remember that this is literally a barn sale, so wear appropriate footwear because you will be crossing a field to get to the barn.
Part of the proceeds from this springs sale goes to one of my favorite local nonprofits Surrey Services.
Also, if you want to make a Chester county day of it, Life’s Patina has their Café and Mercantile in historic Yellow Springs Village. And starting Saturday, the Yellow Springs Art Show opens.
So what does that mean? It means you can start at Life’s Patina barn sale and then go to Yellow springs Village and taking the art show starting Saturday and have lunch in the café or coffee! The café, located in the historic Jenny Lind house is located at 1657 Art School Rd., Chester Springs PA. And the Mercantile is also full of amazing things for your home.
I opened with that snippet from the Lower Merion School District meeting.
Why?
Because it has sent off a tsunami of social media speculation. I can’t resist and I have to memorialize some of it. It’s fascinating.
When I started seeing things appear on social media yesterday, I actually reached out to Natural Lands. They told me what was appearing on Facebook wasn’t true. I have no reason to doubt them. Because if Lower Merion School District is in the middle of a delicate transaction, no one might know anything yet.
They actually responded on social media:
I’m going with nothing to see here with Oakwell until there is actually something to see. Large real estate transactions, especially when you’re talking about hopefully a preservationist can be quite delicate, so in my opinion it’s time to put the egos aside and sit on the gotcha moments for now.
Like I said, sometimes the side show is more interesting than the circus. What is gained out of this game of gotcha?
