⚠️Correction: I wanted to get this video out there, and it has been a federally listed historic resource since the early 1980s not the 1960s⚠️
The Joseph Price House. 401 Clover Mill in Exton, West Whiteland Township, Chester County. The corner of Clover Mill Road and S. Whitford Road. Historically rotting since we can safely say 1988 when the current owners acquired the property.
I actually know people who tried in recent years to purchase the historic house to save it but present owners can never seem to sell, can they? Do they think they will get millions of dollars more than property is worth? And if I am honest, part of what I fear with this property is not only the house, completely falling apart to the point where it can’t be saved, but the possibility of this property ending up in some weird tax sale, and someone unscrupulous getting the property and then just tearing down a legit and registered historic house.
I have made a black-and-white photo of this house in its current state the banner for this website and the Chester County Ramblings social media channels. The reason I did that in June is because I think it’s beautiful and needs to be saved, and I keep hoping if people keep seeing the house, it will provoke conversations, and folks will ask questions, send me old photos and history. Recently, someone did. Their dad was born in the house in 1926.
South side of Joseph Price House 1926.
I took exterior shots with a zoom lens from across the road earlier this year in June. I did not trespass. The house as previously mentioned is in grave peril.
I had questioned before if the house was secure. At one point it did have a caretaker but after what I saw through the lens of my camera I do not see how it is possible for anyone to live in that house safely or legally. But I suppose anything is possible?
Interior Joseph Price House, date and photographer unknown. BUT believed to be only a few years old.
However a couple of years ago I was sent a couple interior photos of recent vintage. I do NOT know how they were obtained. I also don’t know who sent them to me and I have searched to find the old message and it is long gone. I have never posted these images but I think it is time. Maybe it will of help to motivate West Whiteland to get the owners to properly secure the structure or even help someone, anyone to get a conservation/preservation buyer? I figure the current owners have to be getting up there in age? I also found a random and old court docket with the owners on it, have no idea what it was about does anyone?
Anyway this house is glorious and if Loch Aerie in neighboring East Whiteland could be saved and repurposed with a new life, why not this place too?
#thisplacematters #history #historichouses
I mean are there ANY reporters TV or print media with the gumption to cover this? It’s not a human bleeding and dying, it’s just a house. A historically noted house. We can’t save everything but we should save some things, right?
Save the Joseph Price House in Exton. But please don’t trespass there, it is still someone else’s property.
This won’t be a particularly long post and over the next couple of days I will be going through photos from the sign ceremony to post but today my heart was happy and full of joy.
I love this site, and I love the history it represents, and today I felt hopeful. Today I felt the old souls were pleased… and I could also feel more recent souls who loved Ebenezer whom I knew, Ann Christie and Al Terrell were smiling.
Also something unexpected happened. Today I got a thank you for my contributions to Ebenezer. That is a place that is so special to me, and the thank you was heartfelt. It came from Pastor April Martin and Bertha Jackmon. Coming from them that really meant something special to me. No one really has ever publicly recognized my efforts, and it’s one of those things where no brass band was ever needed, but a simple thank you today meant the world.
My relationship with the East Whiteland Historic Commission doesn’t really exist. I genuinely like a couple of the members and a few members past and present have always been truly really nice to me, and I enjoy speaking with them and knowing them a little bit, BUT I know most of those people do not like me, and a few do not go out of their way to make me feel welcome. And part of the things that have upset me about Ebenezer was trying to talk to them over the years. None of them are bad people, but they are quite cliquish, and not necessarily welcoming to someone like me, or anyone who isn’t their normal person.
Part of what I realized today is I don’t need their approval or permission to love local history. They honestly did a really nice job with the ceremony. Ebenezer’s graveyard is nicely cleaned up. A bunch of stones have fallen over but it’s partially the site itself, and there are new homes being dug around it. The plan is to restore the stones and cap the church ruin which is perfect.
There is a brand new website and fundraising will need to be done for the future and if there are folks who can set up a non profit to help Ebenezer live long into the future visit https://www.historicebenezerbactonhill.org/
It was really nice to visit Hiram and Joshua today too.
Many thanks to Chair of the East Whiteland Supervisors Scott Lambert and Manager Steve Brown for their support of preserving this historic site and for arranging all sorts of things today and East Whiteland PD for making a sometimes busy road behave today.
Again, I will post photos over the next few days. In the future I would like to plant daffodils and snowdrops by the grave stones after they are reset.
I can’t tell you how many people told me I didn’t know what I was talking about when I wrote the post recently about the old Wayne Bed and Breakfast Inn.
March 10, 2023
Well, one of my readers contacted me this afternoon and told me that she was being destroyed beginning today. A little while ago I was sent a picture which is the first one on this post.
Demolition has begun. Truly a goddamn waste.
This beauty is going with barely a whimper from Radnor Township. A property of historic import, which also had been lovingly and meticulously restored. In the place of this great house will be some soullessMcMansions, probably front and loaded to boot.
Also, now gone are so many of trees, and the beautiful gardens. And those gardens had some very old plantings. I think it was an ash tree that was very very old on this property and they didn’t even take cuttings from it. It survived when many of its species did not. Radnor Township pays lip service to being good environmental stewards and tree tenders too, in my humble opinion.
This is a waste. It is purely a waste. And I hope the ghosts of that bed-and-breakfast haunt that new development and future residents. This place could have had an adaptive reuse that could have been worked into this brand new development.
This is why I urged Radnor Township residents to start going back to meetings. And something you should start with sooner rather than later is Fenimore Woods. If you think Fenimore Woods should be left as woods, you know the way it was originally intended, don’t depend on an old politician to be your sole voice who has been commissioner so many times throughout the years that he can’t not act like a commissioner even when he’s not in office.
Get involved in your township before it’s too late. And get yourselves a new manager too. Maybe it’s time for all of you to start adding up all the crazy stuff that has happened under his watch. Are you really better off with him? Or don’t you deserve better? And yes, you can question who governs you and you should. You also deserve a manager who is accessible to residents and you don’t have that.
If any of you take photos of the demolition in process, or have old photos of this place, feel free to send them I will post them.
RIP Wayne Bed and Breakfast Inn at 211 Strafford Avenue in Wayne, PA.
These are not my words to follow. They are the words of a friend. These are words he is saying publicly, so I am sharing them. Easttown is on the verge of once again destroying Berwyn.
The Frazer Diner on Route 30 in Frazer has closed. I am honestly concerned about this site, which has been written about a slew of times and is actually in a book about diners.
I love old school diners. Sorry not sorry, it’s scrapple and eggs for me, or a diner burger and a fountain coke. Remember the diner days of years gone by where you would see the lemon meringue pies with their high hats of meringue in the cases with other desserts? I remember that from the original Minella’s in Wayne and this cool old diner in North Jersey
Anyway, the Frazer Diner is a truly cool example of an amazingly intact diner. And now they have closed. Research indicates the Cavalati family still owns it, the owners live in Mechanicsburg, PA. So they are far removed from this now, will they sell? Find a new tenant?
Why am I concerned? We hear the continued whispers of developers sniffing around East Whiteland and the Route 30/Lancaster Ave corridor. West Whiteland is a hotbed of bad development and neighboring Easttown is not much better along Lancaster Avenue is it? Just look at that new construction gargantuan and hideous apartments or whatever dwarfing the Berwyn Pub.
Originally manufactured in 1935[2](though some sites reference 1929), it was purchased by Frances and Sylvester Cavalati in 1957 and moved to its present location at 189 Lancaster Avenue, Frazer, Pennsylvania in East Whiteland Township. In 1972, while retaining ownership, they leased it to others to operate and the name was changed to the Frazer Diner.[3]
Around 1983, the diner was leased to Tam Nguyen and his wife Hao (law school graduate and nurse, respectively) who had fled communism in Vietnam and moved to the Main Line in 1980. They operated it as the Linh Diner, specializing in Vietnamese-Chinese food, and it became a regular lunch stop for nearby high-tech companies in the Great Valley. After five years building a successful business, they were running out of space and looking to move to a new location that was to be built as part of a new shopping center nearby. Before that happened, the Cavalati’s served the Nguyens an eviction notice, and noted there was a buyer who wanted to move the diner to Hollywood.[4]
The Nguyens did eventually open the Linh Restaurant nearby, but the diner was not moved to California, and eventually re-opened, once again as the Frazer Diner.
Diners have a place in our hearts and communities. It doesn’t have to be haute cuisine. It’s a community gathering place historically, and some diners were just breakfast and lunch, some did 3 meals, some were open 24 hours.
I find today especially out here in Chester County, we lack a distinct variety from the most humble through to fine dining. We are a lot of formula food, fast food, sushi, brew pubs, quasi steak houses. The only good BBQ is Farm Boy, and they are a gem (hope they re-open soon!)
There always were historically good diners in Chester County. And one by one they are biting the dust. DK still holds court in West Chester. The West Chester Diner used to be pretty good, but the last couple of years it has sadly gone downhill. But West Chester Diner was always too big. Frazer like DK had that little joint feel, which I think is part of the whole diner experience.
The funny thing about the Frazer Diner is how often it has been written up in diner articles. I am putting into this post what I have discovered. I am putting this out there in the hopes someone saves it, or in the hopes that anyone is interested at all.
We need fewer crappy apartment and townhouse developments. How about adaptive reuse of literally a historic diner? Thanks for stopping by.
So it is now five days before Christmas in 2022. Nothing has happened except once again, Lloyd farmhouse is not secure. How I learned about this today was from someone whose dog got loose and they went in a panic across the field stopping the dog just before the entrance of the house.
This is not someone who’s been involved with this issue. They sent me photos and videos taken from outside the house asking me if this is the same house I used to write about. And I said yes it was.
So what I want to know, is why Caln Township is looking the other way? This house is for all intents and purposes, a construction site, correct? So legally, isn’t it supposed to be secured?
The inside apparently is more trashed than ever. I’m wondering if the owner of the property is just waiting for me to post something like this or for someone /anyone to post something like this, so they have an excuse to take it down because there’s nothing stopping them from getting a demolition permit?
Except Caln Township, hello? Why is everything look the other way in your neck of the woods? Of course, however, this does give me the opportunity to point out once again how this is a historic resource that is rotting to the point it’s criminal.
Now nothing has been built on the site and it’s been a few years, so is nothing going to get built? I’m guessing given the economy in the way rates have been the answer is nothing is happening right now. And since nothing is happening right now then perhaps the property owner should be securing the property or the township should be doing it for him and sending him a bill?
I also seem to recall that there were supervisors elected that were supposed to help with issues like this? Are they still there? What happens when kids decide to explore over here because you know they will and obviously have been, and what not f something bad happens?
Merry Christmas, Caln residents. This is another fine example of your government at work. And yes, Caln Township I can indeed have this opinion. Just like I can have the opinion that this is still one of the finest examples in Chester County of demolition by neglect. Such a time honored tradition.
Last word? This beautiful farmhouse, which is a prime example of the Chester County style of farmhouses, also predates the American Revolution, and nobody gives a shit. Yeah, you can still see even in this state of disarray her good bones.
Hey Lower Merion Township/Penn Valley/Gladwyne is this your future?
The secret is out. Once again the billboard baron is on the march. A reminder of what they did in East Whiteland Township, Chester County:
Oh and these are the trees they weren’t allowed to take in East Whiteland because residents went to PennDOT:
What has recently been heard regarding East Whiteland is that Catalyst withdrew their application from Penndot not so long ago and something like the billboard site is being sold to yet another billboard company?
And here are more views of current uses of the West Conshohocken sign not really so far away from where they want them in Lower Merion:
Yeah so read what came out from one Lower Merion Township Commissioner, Josh Grimes. And people say the commissioner in Bryn Mawr, Scott Zelov is all for moving the billboards so it now becomes the problem of another area of the township? Pretty obnoxious if true, right? Especially given all of the support other commissioners have gladly provided to him all these years over billboards in Bryn Mawr? Really hope this isn’t true don’t you? I also wonder who he’s using for a lawyer this time? Because unless I am mistaken I believe the lawyer he used and East Whiteland is actually Radnor Commissioner Jack Larkin and I wonder how he would feel if the shoe was on the other foot and they wanted to put billboards in Radnor?
And what’s with the carrot and rabbit psychology by billboard company? Kind of like what they did in East Whiteland, right? Perhaps it’s being done this way in Lower Merion because the objective all along was to get the giant TV billboards on the Schuylkill Expressway? Maybe the billboards should go up at “Maple Hill”? That’s in Gladwyne, right?
So my opinion which I’m entitled to have as I hope lower Merion fights these billboards because just because the man can buy a house in Lower Merion it doesn’t mean Lower Merion should have to be the location for his billboards unless they’re going on his own front lawn, Anyway, here is what Lower Merion residents are now facing:
Lower Merion School District is front page news over Oakwell, next door to Stoneleigh in Villanova.
Why? Eminent domain….again
We shouldn’t be surprised because Lower Merion School District probably wields eminent domain or the threat of eminent domain more than any institution I’ve ever heard of. I could be wrong, I am sure there are some that do it more but in my worldview they are one of the worst offenders.
Lower Merion School District in my humble opinion has always abused eminent domain powers. It’s like they think they are LMSD and everybody should just bow down. 
In their vision quest with blinders they’ve gone after Stoneleigh, Ashbridge Park, etc. I think if they had bought this property with the intention of using the house as the administration building for the school district or something like that I wouldn’t care. But to so wantonly wish to destroy so much green space, so many trees, so much beauty for turf fields for middle schoolers is really kind of tone deaf in today’s world and it’s just wrong, pick a reason.
The house itself is super cool and historic. Things on the grounds are historic. There’s a teahouse with a beautiful giant old terra-cotta warrior who is just spectacular. It’s an amazing property, and once again it’s something that will be destroyed because of this school district if they aren’t stopped.
It doesn’t matter who the superintendent of the school district is, they just think if it’s something they want they can take it. Again, this is my opinion and I’m allowed to have it. I spent 30+ years living in Lower Merion Township.
Something else I find interesting is literally across the road is Delaware County and Radnor Township. How do they feel about this? How do their residents feel?
The whole Oakwell issue has been a slow burn that seems to have ignited. I don’t have a crystal ball on how it will play out, but I don’t think middle schoolers need turf fields and artificial turf as much as they need nature. Kids need to be able to be kids. A lot of kids today don’t want to be on organized sports teams. There are also field alternatives where they can share fields. But the problem with the school district is they don’t do anything nicely, sharing among them.
So once again we’re staring in the face of Lower Merion School District’s misplaced sense of entitlement.
The Philadelphia Inquirer did an amazing job on this article and I think everyone should read it.
John Bennett kindled the hearth on a recent day in what was once his 20,000-square-foot brick Tudor Revival manor replete with heavy wooden doors, wainscoted library, and Mercer floor tile.
The 72-year-old physician-turned-medical-device-entrepreneur recalled how he lost the home and its 10 acres off County Line Road in Villanova through eminent domain in 2018 to make way for middle-school athletic fields. The property, known as Oakwell, contains nearly 700 trees, some of which are thought to date back centuries.
“Everything happened so quickly that there was no way to save it,” Bennett said as he recounted stories about the house, including having a ghost exorcised.
The Lower Merion School District— one of the wealthiest in Pennsylvania —paid Bennett $9.9 million for the house and grounds in the condemnation with plans to clear-cut hundreds of the trees for athletic fields for newly opened Black Rock Middle School. Updated plans show it would keep the Oakwell mansion and a pool house, but a teahouse watched over by a terra cotta warrior, stone fencing, and a brick-walled garden complex all dating back at least 120 years would be razed. The $90 millionmiddle school opened this year. The district plans to start breaking ground for the fields in June…..
What is eminent domain?
The taking of Oakwell marks one of several district attempts to build athletic fields for the new school. The board faced an outcry in 2018 when it tried to condemn part of the Stoneleigh estate next door, which is preserved under a conservation easement. Efforts to use the nearbyAshbridge Memorial Park were halted by a long-standing deed restriction. An attempt to use another nearby property also fizzled, while other lots were deemed unsuitable…..
Eminent domain — or the ability of the government to pay landowners to seize their private property for public use — is a power “inherent to the government,” said Matthew Hovey, a municipal attorney with the High Swartz law firm that represents clients in the area.
Typically, Hovey said, the power is used as a last resort as it can prove “politically unpopular” and may lead to costly and lengthy legal challenges.
With election season here, it means two more lawn signs in Westtown Township, Chester County. It means a vote “YES” to save Crebilly sign. Sadly it also means a vote “NO” to save Crebilly sign.
I have been keeping my mouth shut but I think now is the time to say something. There isn’t much time to make the right decision here.
The folks who want a “YES” vote have it right. This is a unique opportunity it’s not just a couple of acres, it’s a lot of acres. It’s a lot of open space. Its a lot of open space that nods to agricultural tradition and the equine culture that literally made Chester County. It’s also a lot of open space with serious historic importance.
Voting “YES” to save Crebilly won’t come around again. In the short term, does it mean you get to pay a little more as a resident in taxes? Yes it does. But tax increases for land purchases such as this have a sunset date, don’t they? They don’t last forever, do they?
Land is not free. Could the Robinson family just donate the whole kit and kaboodle like the Haas family did with Stoneleigh? Maybe they could, but I don’t think they ever would. I think this is the best deal that residents are going to get who want this land parcel saved in perpetuity.
People have worked for years to get everything to this point. A critical point in the history of Westtown Township. And that’s where the naysayers come in. The naysayers claim to be fiscal conservatives, but I think they just want a free lunch. I think they’re being selfish. Yes it’s a hard time to ask people to dig deeper and pay a little bit more each year and taxes. But it’s not forever.
If the naysayers get their way and push through the “NO” vote and Crebilly is NOT saved, in my humble opinion they should be shunned, yes a good old-fashioned Amish shunning.
Why?
It’s pretty simple and no one should have to spell it out for you. If Westtown does not get a “YES” vote, the development Russian Roulette will start again and this time? The neighbors of Crebilly, the concerned residents of Westtown, and essentially anyone in the area will be screwed in perpetuity. The open space will be gone, the roads will be more clogged, the infrastructure will be stressed unbelievably, and let’s talk about the West Chester Area School District because what do you think it means to get a huge development on Crebilly to that district?
So that’s the choice that is before you residence of Westtown Township. Do you vote “YES” and have something in perpetuity that you, your neighbors, your friends, your children and your children’s children can love and enjoy and be proud of OR do you end up looking like an over developed section of Delaware County or Bensalem or King of Prussia that everyone hates?
Vote “YES” residents of Westtown. Tune out the selfish naysayers who don’t, can’t, or won’t understand. If they don’t like it, they can move, right? It’s a desirable municipality to live in, after all.
Vote “YES” to #SAVECREBILLY . It’s the ultimate act of community.
