Next to Clews & Strawbridge in Frazer is a crumbling house. What’s the deal with that? (Chester County along route 30 seems to have a lot of tumble-down and crumbling structures.)
Tag Archives: pa
antiques exploring….
Down on Little Conestoga Road not so long after you pass through Eagle, there is a barn. It’s an antiques barn I have been obsessed with discovering for over a year.
This past Saturday after months of closed barn doors, it was open. They aren’t quite ready for what the owner describes as their season, but they let us poke around.
I had so much fun. It is packed to the gills with all sorts of stuff and I look forward to future exploration as it reminds me of a similar barn I stumbled upon in rural New Hampshire once upon a time.
I also look forward to exploring in MilkHouse in Glenmoore, although truthfully, the other barn just holds more interest and curiosity for me.
marooned and desolate in frazer: lockwood mansion (“loch aerie”)
There is a mansion which has fascinated me for years. A giant Victorian creature, marooned and perched on an island of land in Frazer, PA along route 30, a/k/a Lancaster Avenue a/k/a Lincoln Highway. You also see it when you go into Home Depot.
Every time I see the mansion I look for signs that either someone has bought it, or someone wants to tear it down. It deserves to be saved as it is a truly magnificent structure.
I learned more about the house thanks to a You Tube video I am posting. It should be preserved. It’s very cool. It is also of the designs of Addison Hutton . Once upon a time a few years ago, I was on a committee that saved a house called Beechwood, on the Lower School Campus of the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr. It was also an Addison Hutton house.
Anyone have any stories to tell on this house? The Daily Local wrote about it a couple of times in 2010
Am I to gather from another article sent to me that was also in The Daily Local that this poor house is owned by the Tabas Family? Hmmm, I knew Susan Tabas Tepper growing up, knew about the Downingtown Inn, Mickey Rooney’s Tabas Hotel, Twelve Casars, and Riverfront and City Line Dinner Theaters, but not this. Are they going to let this just rot? Why don’t they restore it and sell it?
Lockwood Mansion owners reject bid
Published: Thursday, June 10, 2010
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer
Here is the delusional offer sheet on the house – apparently it is the listing of a Keller Williams guy in Exton named Bob Liberato. He needs to buy a clue and a better head shot. The property is listed at $2,250,000? And oh yes, it can be yours as a commercial rental for $20 a square foot – you know I guess they just aren’t worrying about reality getting in the way of the economy, right?
In my humble opinion, the owners don’t care about this mansion, or its history or the fact that it was a work product of an incredibly famous Philadelphia architect. Mind you this is what is wrong with the corridor along which it sits. Drive up through Paoli and beyond – through to Frazer, Exton and beyond and you will see a lot of pretty amazing structures just rotting. And in between them are hodge podge commercial developments dotting the landscape with no thought to planning whatsoever. (Another rotting structure I have always been curious about is the house so falling in on itself it is dangerous either right next to or near Clews & Strawbridge.)
I also found a very cool slide show on Flickr . You know what is crazy? This is exactly the kind of structure that should be on The National Trust for Historic Preservation watch list.
They don’t build ’em like Loch Aeire / Lockwood Mansion anymore . But much like La Ronda in Bryn Mawr once sat rotting in her faded glory, so does this home. And generally speaking, people either don’t care, or only care when it is too late.
I dub Lockwood Mansion the La Ronda of Malvern. May we only hope her ultimate fate is not so horrible as La Ronda’s was.
you get what you pay for, I suppose
Big news seems to be that West Chester Area School District is maintaining it’s bond rating. They get what they pay for I suppse, but the reviews I hear on this school district don’t qualify as raves.
Start with how much bullying is tolerated in the elementary and middle schools, how they don’t really want gifted student programs, and many other issues. What happened to the language programs in at least the elementary schools? What’s up with in essence, science in a box? I saw first hand via a friend, what qualified as “homework” in basics like social studies.
All I see out of West Chester Area School District is a dumbing down of students. I remember last spring something coming out about rankings – I don’t remember West Chester being so hot when it came to stacking up side by side against other school districts. According to the Philadelphia Business Journal the top ten included Tredyffrin-Easttown, Radnor, Lower Merion, Unionville-Chadds Ford, Central Bucks and others. But not West Chester. West Chester according to the statistics was 41 in this ranking of PSSA scores.
Where do charter schools and private and catholic schools fit into this equation? Because it seems to me a lot of folks in Chester County have their kds in those kinds of schools to escape the public school system.
Whatever, I don’t pretend to be an expert or even an afficianado of public schools, but I don’t understand how a district I hear serious complaints about is rated so high? But then again, I don’t pretend to understand school districts or school boards – truthfully most of the time to me all I hear out of them is noise – kind of like what Peppermint Patty and the rest of the Pesnuts gang hear when the teacher is talking – that wahhh-wahhh-wahhh-blahhh-blahh-blahh noise.
Maybe West Chester Area School District is all that and a bag of chips. I don’t know. There is always a first time.
greetings and salutations….
It’s time for a new blog…about Chester County, PA.
As seen through my eyes.
Fasten your seatbelts, because occasionally it may be a bumpy ride.