In the shadow of Paoli Hospital, lying at its literal feet is a teeny neighborhood. The neighborhood is an island unto itself, squashed between the shadow of the GIANT hospital complex and Route 30.

What is the deal with that neighborhood? Is it something the hospital wishes would go away? What was it once part of?

I am told that this little village in front of Paoli Hospital may have once housed quarry workers as did the one on Route 401 (only 1 house left there now) near the railroad crossing (now bike path). A long time Chester County resident remembers in the 50’s, working class families living at both locations, and was told they worked at the quarry. The quarry supposedly became the Rubino-Knickerbocker landfill (wasn’t that a super fund site?), then 202 purportedly went right through it. The quarry, some say, was known as the L.K. Quarry, and the Knickerbocker Lime Co. where a lime kiln was operated. I guess the kiln/lime works was what the workers were needed for?

What do you know about this little village? Was the reference to a fire that Knickerbocker Lime Co called in at the turn of the 20th century in the Malvern Fire Company history this neighborhood/village?

Now, I have found a couple of things talking about the quarries and landfill:

on TE History:

GREAT VALLEY AREA LIMESTONE QUARRIES

(see Page 16):

Plate 15—East Whiteland Township—of volume two of the 1963 Franklin Survey Property Atlas of the Main Line shows that 154 acres in the quarry area are owned by Theodore S. A. Rubino and another 43 acres are owned by Rae Crowther. The former siding south to the Trenton Cut-Off is now shown as an unimproved road.

By 1970 the quarry was inactive, had been flooded with water to create a natural lake, and was known as the Knickerbocker Sanitary Landfill.

Around 2000, Liberty Property Trust purchased a total of 60 acres—the 30-acre quarry and the surrounding area—from the estate of Samuel and Theodore Rubino for between $7 and $8 million.