Tag Archives: Villanova

nothing like a couple of obnoxious notes from a nice catholic on st. patrick’s day

Posted on by
1

So yesterday I wrote once again about the animal house- like- party house located at 985 Mount Pleasant Ave, Wayne PA. It is located in Tredyffrin Township in what they call the “panhandle” of Tredyffrin.

Mt. Pleasant is actually a historic area and it was an early black settlement in Chester County and the Main Line. Every year for years there have quite the collection of students wreaking havoc there off campus most weekends. The residents refer to one house at 985 Mount Pleasant Avenue as the blue tarp house because the students hang blue contactor tarps to shield their keggers from view.

These kids off campus in this neighborhood are horrible from year to year. Everyone expects college kids to be college kids, right? So why is it from year to year the off campus students can’t have fun without trashing this neighborhood?

This weekend’s parties resulted in a lot of neighbor chatter. Kids vomiting in the street, urinating in public (including girls), trash, open containers, driving like crazy, etc.

Again, if they wanted to be good neighbors and have fun, they could. But they don’t. They are terrible. So I wrote about it yesterday.

well hello tredyffrin- that’s some college kegger in mount pleasant…

Here are screenshots from the actual neighbor chat regarding these parties this weekend:

Well one college student didn’t like my commenting/writing about this:

“get a life fat granny ur kids don’t love you”

ian.p.keeley@gmail.com

IP 153.104.35.63

And dude wasn’t hard to find. He used his real e-mail address and his IP address gave a nice Villanova University location. In Radnor Township no less.

Oh yeah, the IP address of it all:

I will admit that I shot back a snotful reply and called him a twat waffle. I suggested not so bright to use his real email etc. Then I blocked that email address and IP.

Welp, the indignant Villanova student had to leave another comment:

u want my phone number too? social secuirty? ur so cool you can track my IP the FBI should recruit you. Maybe it would give you something better to do than stalk college children during a holiday you predatory creep

blah.blah@gmail.com

IP 153.104.34.226

And again…the IP address told the Villanova story again:

So I told him I was going to go to Villanova directly. He was harassing me and for what? Because I said college kids going to parties at 985 Mount Pleasant shouldn’t be drunken jerks? Shouldn’t piss in/on the street? Shouldn’t vomit in the street? Shouldn’t leave trash everywhere? Shouldn’t drive recklessly in a neighborhood where there are little kids with their buddies hanging out of the trunks of cars? I told him also he was not quite a child, although definitely acting like one. Then I blocked that IP and fake e-mail.

And I did go to Villanova with the comments and IP addresses etc. Not that anything will probably happen. They still can’t control the off campus student population. I have never thought they tried particularly hard. They do have this nifty off campus booklet now:

STD2631819_VUGoodNeigh_BRH_v2Download

These are the two of my favorite pages:

Sadly, I do not know where they found the students in the brochure because they obviously don’t hang out at Villa Blue Tarp.

So I hope that college jackass likes his five minutes of fame. I sent it to the Dean of Students at Villanova. I told him what I had written about previously. Maybe it will make an impression and give the residents of Mount Pleasant and other off campus student housing plagued neighborhoods some peace. We were all that age once. Away from home, testing limits and boundaries. But oddly I do not recall trashing people’s neighborhoods and being miserable drunken neighbors.

College students can have fun without acting like every weekend is a reincarnation of animal house. These students don’t get that the neighbors wouldn’t care if they weren’t so damn loud, drunk, and obnoxious. But real people live around these off campus student houses.

I lived next door to one once upon a time, until a slum lord’s cheap roofer decided to do roof repairs on a windy enough day that the roof caught on fire and the house burned to the ground. And you know who contacted Villanova to make sure that the school found them places to stay and contacted parents etc? Oh that would have been me. And that house was horrible with the parties and super rude inhabitants. We would wake up and there would be like 20 cars on their lawn, and then cars on our lawn, neighbors’ lawns etc. But still when those kids needed help, the 24/7/365 neighbors were there. That is what is being part of a community is about. Hopefully they get that some day.

So yes, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day and yo Erin Go Bratty.

Love, Fat Granny. kiss kiss.

well hello tredyffrin- that’s some college kegger in mount pleasant…

Posted on by
5

Tredyffrin Township likes to ignore their panhandle, especially Mount Pleasant. You see, if they ignore this area, they can pretend that there aren’t off-campus college student keggers all of the time. This is an area overrun by off-campus student housing and quite a few student housing slumlords.

In blue tarp city in Mount Pleasant, which is what the college students here do to shield themselves from the neighbors while throwing keggers, although the neighbors have no choice but to listen to them, watch them pee in the street, watch them throw up, watch them leave, trash all over, etc.

This latest kegger started receiving people late this morning.

So I thought it was just the right thing to do to remind Tredyffrin Township that between the predatory ugly new development that is sitting unsold and the off campus student housing and their parties, they are quite literally ignoring and forgetting the residents.

norristown borough council dude has main line issues?

Posted on by

This headline caught my eye. Norristown. So shady and in decline it might be the Montgomery County version of Chester in Delaware County. Can we say the love of decades of issues, possibly corruption shows?

I don’t know who this guy is I never heard of him before today (I rarely follow Montgomery County politics these days, and I certainly don’t know much about Norristown, other than its downtrodden), but this is despicable. And can we say this is one hell of a nasty political stunt? And it’s also obvious that he is targeting a woman (Stephanie Sena ) who advocates for homeless people and isn’t that a little disturbing?

And above all else, this guy seems to have an enormous chip on his shoulder about the different sides of Montgomery County. Norristown and Villanova are polar opposites. And the Norristown side of Montgomery County has always historically hated Lower Merion Township. And now this hatred is taking another form and using homeless people like others are using immigrants. I can’t escape the notion that this is more about politics than the actual homeless encampments but who knows?

The homeless population is real in suburbia, and it has been for years. And Norristown is a cesspool of issues and has been for years and it’s the Montgomery County seat. But this guy is essentially talking about treating the homeless population inhumanely, and the fact that this is coming from Norristown doesn’t surprise me in the least.

I can’t decide if Norristown is better or worse under Democrat control. Because it certainly wasn’t better under Republican control. Norristown was once a thriving metropolis, now it’s a place most people want to drive through as quickly as possible. And is that the fault of the homeless people and the homeless people seem like they are like being moved around like pawns on a chessboard? Before I get to today’s article, here’s one from a few days ago:

Fearing a ‘sweep,’ people living homeless in Norristown wait to be cast out of encampments

“They’re moving us around like dirt,” said a resident of one of 20 encampments in the borough. Local, state, and national homeless advocates are gearing up for a fight with municipal officials.

by Alfred Lubrano
Updated on May 28, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

About 20 homeless encampments in Norristown will be cleared in the coming weeks, with no plans to store people’s confiscated property, according to advocates for individuals living homeless in the borough.

Officially, borough officials have neither confirmed nor denied what advocates call a potential “sweep” of an estimated 160 people living mostly in tents in various parts of the municipality, many in public parks.

A spokesperson for Peco, however, said that individuals living in tents on 3,000 feet of land owned by the utility along the Schuylkill River Trail in Norristown “will need to relocate” at an unspecified time so “hazardous waste and trash” can be removed from the site. Advocates say about 12 people live there.

Homelessness is a fraught issue in Norristown, where residents, advocates, and those experiencing homelessness exist in a tense environment. It plays out in a county of great wealth but few beds for those who sleep outside. These days, when a person who loses a home calls Montgomery County for help, there’s little more advocates can do than issue tents.

Norristown officials have said they’ll time a full-borough sweep to coincide with Peco’s clear-out, according to Stephanie Sena, a homelessness expert and anti-poverty professor at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law. She also runs a homeless shelter in Upper Darby.

Thomas Lepera, Norristown’s president/councilman at-large, was asked multiple times in an interview whether the municipality will be clearing out people living homeless within its borders. He declined to answer, repeating the phrase, “We’ll be cleaning sites of hazardous materials where people are living” in encampments. He acknowledged that the eradication of what he described as “feces, needles, and God-knows-what-else in barrels” will coincide with Peco’s efforts. No date is set.

So this Stephanie Sena spoke out in her capacity as a homeless advocate and now she is being targeted and so is her employer by the head of Norristown Borough Council?

There is an epidemic of homeless in the greater Philadelphia region. But how do you solve the issues when people like these politicians in Montgomery County are ratcheting up the drama? And based on the articles, I’m reading it’s like nobody wants to touch this hot potato and this guy is connected to a lot of interesting people, so are those people being judged by this company they are keeping? Including the newly minted, Democratic candidate for mayor for the City of Philadelphia? And everyone knows that the City of Philadelphia has quite a huge homeless population don’t they?

I’m just kind of appalled and disturbed by this whole thing all the way around. I don’t pretend to have any answers but surely we can all do better instead of acting like we come from Texas and Greg Abbott is our BFF?

And this Hatfields and McCoys thing going on, depending on what side of Montgomery County you are from is beyond old.

I don’t have any answers here, and I certainly don’t have a dog in this fight, but I find these articles disturbing.

Now for the article:

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Norristown official wants to bus people living homeless to Villanova University

Thomas Lepera, the municipality’s president and councilman at-large, allegedly said he wanted to be Norristown’s version of Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott.

By Alfred Lubrano

The head of Norristown’s municipal council said he plans to bus people living homeless in the borough to the Villanova University campus.

Thomas Lepera, the municipality’s president/councilman at-large, said he’ll offer $500 gift cards to everyone who boards the bus at the end of the month. The money would come from donations, Lepera has said. Norristown has no homeless shelter.

Lepera is choosing Villanova because Stephanie Sena, an anti-homelessness advocate and anti-poverty fellow at the university’s Charles Widger School of Law, has been working on behalf of an estimated 160 people experiencing homelessness in Norristown. Sena also runs a homeless shelter in Upper Darby.

Sena said that Lepera called her an “ivory tower elitist” during a brief meeting last week to discuss encampments. The meeting included Eric Tars, legal director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Homelessness Law Center.

Sena said Lepera added, “Just so you know, I’m taking buses and shipping people to Villanova.”

Tars corroborated the account, adding, “Tom told Stephanie he’s ‘going to create a clown show on the Villanova campus by throwing needles and trash’ from Norristown encampments onto the Campus Green.”

Then Lepera ended the meeting by cursing at Sena and making an obscene gesture, both Sena and Tars said.

Asked for comment, a Villanova spokesperson said in a statement, “The work being done by Stephanie Sena is part of her personal advocacy efforts; it is not being done on behalf of, or at the direction of, Villanova University.

“Villanova University has had multiple conversations with Norristown officials to clarify Ms. Sena’s role as being independent of Villanova.”

The university didn’t directly address questions about the busing.

In a brief phone call, Lepera, who is also political director of IBEW Local 98, declined to discuss the busing plan, or how serious he is about it. He denied hurling obscenities at Sena, then he cursed at a reporter and hung up.

“When you have all the social services in one area, it draws in the homeless population. When you have a pandemic and flood [from Hurricane Ida in 2021, which destroyed low-income housing], your homeless population rises. When it rises, you have stuff called encampments.

“When Stephanie reached out as a representative of Villanova, I said, ‘How perfect is this? Because Villanova, with hundreds of millions in revenue, that prides itself on Catholic values and wants to help the poor, has a school now with empty dorm rooms. …“I couldn’t see a more perfect scenario as where to move the homeless encampments.”…

…Lepera’s Facebook page includes a large Villanova logo with the phrase, “Very Much looking forward to the Villanova/Norristown partnership. More News to come shortly.” The post had garnered 131 likes and hearts as of Friday.

It accumulated comments such as, “I hope it includes busses” from Norristown Councilmember Heather Lewis.

In a text, Lewis said, “I may not 100% agree with Mr. Lepera’s plan, but I do 100% share his frustration” about the problem of homelessness that Norristown must shoulder. “Hence,” she added, “drastic times call for drastic measures.”

r.i.p. geoff partridge

Posted on by

18449308_10211269805892180_5959696336905188429_o

Geoff Partridge in 2017 with his beloved fiancée Jill Turanski. Family photo.

Rest in peace, Geoff Partridge.  May your memory always be a blessing.  You are at peace.

This is the post I hoped I would not have to write. It’s a story that is so hard to write. Last night came the news that a fisherman had found a male body in the Schuylkill River. I think if I am honest with myself, I had a sinking suspicion officials would say it was him because of where he was found compared to the proximity of where he disappeared.

When I first learned of Geoff Partridge being missing in December I did not at first realize that I knew his mother, Holly Morrison.  She and I share some very dear friends.  When you meet people as adults at a certain stage of your life you often do not realize who the kids are because they are grown-up and on their own.  Our mutual friends include those wonderful men who tirelessly searched the river by boat for Geoff.

I have been sitting with this news for a few hours at this point.  When Holly’s and my mutual friend Karen and I spoke I was speechless on the phone.  Then when I got off the phone I cried. Again, I did not know him personally but I cried. For his family, for his friends, for his life light burnt out too soon.  And for some reason bits of the Coldplay song Fix You wouldn’t leave my head.  I don’t know why that song.  I do not even know what kind of music Geoff liked.

One of the last lines of the song… Lights will guide you home.   I guess it was time for Geoff to come home for his loved ones to have closure.

Vinny Vella from the Philadelphia Inquirer was the kind reporter who wrote an article in December when Geoff was first missing.  We turned to him then because it was hard to get coverage of Geoff going missing when it happened, and he was amenable to telling Geoff’s story.  So we turned to him today again as soon as Holly and our friends knew for certain the man found in the river was indeed her son.  Here is what he wrote a little while ago:

Villanova man, missing since December, found dead in Schuylkill, police say
by Vinny Vella Philadelphia Inquirer

Vinny Vella | @Vellastrations | vvella@phillynews.com

Geoffrey Partridge, 36, was found dead in the Schuylkill late Thursday, almost exactly four months after his SUV was found, abandoned, on one of the river’s banks.

A fisherman discovered Partridge’s body about 6:30 p.m. in the water along River Road near Hollow Road in Gladwyne…Partridge’s cause of death was ruled to be drowning, and its manner was ruled to be a suicide, according to a spokesperson for the coroner’s office.

Holly Morrison, Partridge’s mother, said in a brief interview Friday that her “heart is broken” and she and her family were struggling to process the news.

We’re not supposed to bury our children.  My heart is so heavy for her, Geoff’s fiancée Jill, and their family and friends.  Geoff and Jill shared 15 years together. When Holly and I swapped text messages a little while ago she told me she is at such a loss for words and is devastated.

I see that Jill has posted on the Geoff Partridge page on Facebook.  I will share her words:

gp

 

In January of this year, Jill also said:

gp2

I totally teared up the first time I read what she wrote in January, and again today.  There are people who are brilliant and too brief lights in our lives.  Geoff Partridge meant so much to so many.

I am not going to speculate on what happened that fateful evening he disappeared.  As it has been reported, Geoff had bipolar depression and Lyme disease.  Ok that right there is a toxic and exhausting scenario.  And people do not take seriously enough the neurological impacts of Lyme as well as the more obvious symptoms, including pain.

And if you have ever had friends who suffered from any form of depression, it’s a complicated thing to live with.  And I think it’s harder on men because in our society the traditional roles of men being stoic and strong and not expressing how they feel as readily as women makes it harder. It’s the whole boys don’t cry.

My friends tell me how lovely a person Geoff Partridge was. He loved and was loved in return.  I don’t know what else to write.  I am at a loss here as I feel the sadness of this news today quite profoundly. Part of this is just me as a cancer survivor – death hits me differently now. Also as a parent, this hits me hard.

Ar dheas Dé go raibh a anam. (May his soul be on God’s right hand.)

Image may contain: 1 person

family photo

 

 

light a candle for the missing

Posted on by

As 2018 draws to a close, light a candle for the missing. I have lit two bay candles.

One candle is lit for Geoff Partridge of Villanova.

One candle is lit for Anna Maciejewska Gould of Malvern.

They have people who love them and the families deserve the answers they seek. My wish as I lit the candles are for the missing to find their way home.

I know neither of these missing people personally, but this could happen to any family.

Here’s hoping the new year brings answers and the missing do indeed find their way home.

Thanks for stopping by.

missing at christmastime: geoff partridge from lower merion township

Posted on by

47492677_10216814251373619_4230964281765527552_n

This is being posted on Facebook and other social media outlets. Geoff Partridge has been missing for days.  His family and friends are frantic.

Geoff Partridge has been missing since about December 5th from what I can piece together.  And the only media that seems interested is Patch, Main Line Media News, and CBS Philly. Truthfully there is NOT much media on this and I can’t help but wonder why?

Geoff Partridge went missing in Lower Merion Township.  Is Lower Merion not excercising all options to locate a missing and potentially endangered person?  There is so little information available it’s kind of odd.

Does Geoff Partirdge have to be a missing teen or woman?  Or will this turn into one of these Lower Merion missing person mysteries? You know like Toni Lee Sharpless??? She went missing once upon a time in Lower Merion, correct? Or what about Anna Bronislawa Maciejewska from Chester County?  How do these people just vanish and it seems up to ordinary citizens to keep the missing persons cases alive?

When I first saw the missing blasts crossing social media I shared because he came from the township I essentially grew up in and spent a lot of my adult life living in.  He also just looked like a nice person. Kind of what motivated me to share about Anna Maciejewska when she first went missing. Life is short and precious and it costs nothing to pay it forward.

Then I read Geoff Partridge suffered from  bi-polar depression and  between Thanksgiving and the New Year can be really, really hard for anyone experiencing depression. It’s hard enough some years for any of us for any number of reasons.   All I kept thinking is his poor family, not realizing at first I actually know his mother as she and I share mutual close friends.

After I first shared the missing post my friends contacted me to say thank you and to tell me I did know his mom.  And as day after day goes by, I can’t help but wonder what is being said off of the record somewhere that this does NOT seem to be getting the media attention it should?

My friends from Gladwyne and many other residents are combing the area near where his car was found every day for hours.  I have friends with boats on the river who live down on River Road and close by who have been searching.  Even Philadelphia Search and Rescue has gotten into the act, so what gives in the Magic Kingdom that it just doesn’t feel like other than friends and neighbors have a sense of urgency?

Here is what TAPinto Lower Merion and Narberth has had to say:

Gladwyne, PA — Cadaver dogs from the Greater Philadelphia Search & Rescue Team joined the Gladwyne Fire Company Water Rescue Unit Sunday, December 9, searching for a missing Villanova, PA man.  The man’s car was found Wednesday at 1:47 PM partially submerged in the Schuylkill River.

Geoff Partridge, 37, of Villanova, PA, went missing on Wednesday, December 5 at around 12:15 pm.

The car was submerged but the rear end of the vehicle was still showing when it was noticed….The LMPD’s working theory is that the man was washed from the vehicle by the fast flowing river’s current after the car plunged into the frigid water.  The water temperature is low enough that a body could be submerged and unless found may not be spotted until the temperature rises in the spring….Roughly 27 persons, 3 dogs, and 5 rescue boats were employed for the search.  The local team from Gladwyne Fire Company used two boats, the Greater Philadelphia Search and Rescue unit provided 3 boats.  Detective-Sergeant Michael Vice of the Lower Merion Police Department oversaw the entire operation.

Ok seriously. Not trying to be critical of law enforcement but Geoff Partridge is someone’s son and husband and friend and so on.  He matters.  Please pay it forward and share this post or the others on social media.

His family deserves answers.

#GeoffPartridgeismissing

geoff partridge

This was posted by someone I know on Facebook.

#partylikeits1985 #novanation

Posted on by

 Well Villanova University is in the NCAA final which starts shortly. 

It’s so crazy to think that was 31 years ago.  So I figured if people were supposed to party like it’s 1985, someone should post some of the 1985 clippings! I found these a few months ago in a scrapbook!

   

  
The Inquirer ran a story the other day about 1985.
  It was crazy. I was in Bryn Mawr the night they won and walked with a few friends from then John Barleycorn’s in Bryn Mawr with this enormous sea of people up to Villanova’s campus. 
 Apparently in 1985 cars got flipped over but I never saw that. I just remember the surreal feeling of being in a sea of people moving up Lancaster Avenue with no cars on the road. I don’t know if anyone has photographs from 1985 but it was crazy.
  
It would be nice for the Villanova Wildcats to get this win tonight. I just saw Rollie Massimino on the news. He looks so frail and old it made me kind of sad – and the 1985 team was on the news too. 

So let’s go ‘Nova.  Do it again.
  

up in smoke: historic bloomfield in villanova burns

Posted on by

I believe I was in 9th or 10th grade the last time there was a fire at the historic Radnor Township mansion known as Bloomfield.    Bloomfield was built at the turn of the 20th century in the Radnor Township portion of Villanova on the bones of a Victorian Estate built for  Albert Eugene Gallatin in the 1880’s.  Bloomfield was built by Horace Trumbauer and her gardens were designed by the Olmstead brothers.

This place in my opinion was like Radnor’s La Ronda and it was a marvel it had survived this long without being torn down or bastardized.  It looked like a French Chateau with fabulous gardens and a graceful, grand presence.  It was being rented by a Canadian family at the time of the fire – which began mid-afternoon yesterday.

I went today to the site and when I got out of my car there were some news vans at the estate entrance on S. Ithan and the air smelled heavily of smoke.  As I went to take my photos I also glanced up the street shows the gaping, ravaged land where private school Agnes Irwin had been reportedly blasting this week.

There were many gapers and gawkers on the driveway and the road when I arrived and I wandered around with a local reporter from Radnor Patch  (Sam Strike) taking photos.  We got up the driveway to in front of the fencing now surrounding the site where we were met by a Radnor police officer who was none too happy to see us and asked us to leave.  He also threatened to take my camera.  He was just doing his job.

So we left, and we got some good photos, and as we wandered back down the driveway, there were yet more gawkers, so I would not be surprised if they did not soon post a police car at the foot of the driveway.

People are driving up and down S. Ithan hoping for a glance of the scene, and I found others back around Trianon Lane, where you can see glimpses of the gardens, house, and pool from behind wrought iron fencing.

NBC10 is reporting that investigators are trying to find a cause.  The state police fire investigator is now reported to be in charge of the investigation.  I was told that around 175 volunteer fire fighters responded from several companies from all over the area to fight this fire.  (This as a related aside is why everyone should support their local first responders and on the Main Line and in Chester County they are a predominantly volunteer force.)  First responders came from  Radnor, Bryn Mawr, Ardmore, Gladwyne, Penn Wynne, King Of Prussia, Manoa and Newtown Square.

They say the slate roof made it hard for firefighters to break into the roof and battle the fire.  I am also told some firefighters may have suffered some issues due to the heat, etc of the fire.  God bless them for what they did, because truthfully, I know many people near the mansion who had fears of the fire jumping via the trees surrounding the property.   With wind and fire, you just never know how it will travel.

The mansion was most recently owned by Jerald Batoff, son of a former Democratic fundraiser heavyweight, William “Bill” Batoff.   I looked at Delaware County property records yesterday and Batoff had only owned it a few years.  I am told by neighbors that although it had renters, the mansion had been for sale.  Apparently a movie soon to be released called “Safe” was partially filmed there in 2010 – the mansion was a film double for New York City’s Gracie Mansion.

I think this is an incredibly sad loss if this mansion ends up not being rebuilt (I am sure residents will now be nervous that the mansion will be razed and the land sold for some sort of development because that would be a natural thought process after a fire of such devastation), and it is but for the grace of God that people weren’t killed because of this fire.

Here’s the coverage:

Radnor Patch: History Goes Up in Flames at Radnor Mansion:Bloomfield was home to historic architecture.  By Bob Byrne and Sam Strike  Email the authors  5:51 am

When fire tore through the mansion named Bloomfield on South Ithan Avenue on Wednesday, it not only repeated history, but also destroyed it.

Watching with a crowd of neighbors as Bloomfield burned, real estate agent and home builder Jeff Bader lamented what he was seeing.

“It’s a shame. They don’t build them like that anymore,” Bader said about the home with 19 bedrooms, a 25 by 35-foot ballroom and six-car garage.

“You can’t replicate the workmanship and design,” Bader told Patch as firefighters moved into the third hour of fighting the flames.

Historic Main Line mansion falls to fire

By Bonnie L. Cook and Robert Moran  Inquirer Staff Writers

A historic Main Line mansion in Radnor Township was gutted by a fire  Wednesday afternoon.

An automatic alarm was triggered shortly before 2:30 p.m., and by the time  firefighters arrived, flames could be seen shooting through the roof of the  three-story structure on the estate known as Bloomfield, said Township Fire  Marshal Don Wood.

A man and woman who were renting the property got out safely with their two  dogs and a rabbit in a cage, Wood said. Three firefighters suffered minor  injuries.

The fire, which started in an area between the main house and an adjoining  garage, was declared under control before 6 p.m., but fire crews were still  putting out hot spots well into the night, Wood said.

About 10 companies and 175 firefighters responded to the blaze, which was the  equivalent of four alarms, Wood said.

As they battled the towering flames, the mansion was veiled in white smoke  that would occasionally clear enough to reveal the charred remains….The estate was originally the site of the Victorian home of Albert Eugene  Gallatin, which was built around 1885.

George McFadden Jr., a cotton tycoon, acquired the estate, and in the early  1920s he hired famed Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer to remake the main  residence ….It became known as Bloomfield, the name of a branch of the family, the  historical society reported in a 1988 newsletter article.

McFadden died when he was electrocuted by a steam cabinet in a bathroom, the  article said, but the estate remained in the family until 1984.

In late 2010, the 5.87-acre estate served as a double for Gracie Mansion, the  official residence of New York City’s mayor, for the Jason Statham action movie Safe…Bloomfield, listed for sale last year at $6.9 million, had 19 bedrooms and  nine full baths in its 22,000-plus square feet of living space, officials  said.

County records show the property is owned by Jerald Batoff, the son of the  late William Batoff, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser.

NBC10: No Cause Yet for Main Line Mansion Fire/State authorities take over investigation into massive Villanova mansion fire

By   Dan Stamm and  Rosemary Connors
|  Thursday, Apr 5, 2012  |  Updated 2:56 PM EDT

On Thursday all that was left of a once a sprawling Main Line Mansion was the charred remains and stone walls.

Just a day earlier flames broke out at the historic Horace Trumbauer-designed mansion at 200 S Ithan Avenue in Villanova, Pa….On Thursday the State Police and state fire officials took over the investigation into the cause of the multi-alarm blaze at the 22,000-plus-square-foot home as authorities remained quiet as to what could have caused the massive blaze.

Neighbors told NBC10 that renters were apparently inside when the fire started…A few firefighters suffered minor injuries battling the blaze.

Delaware County assessed the property for nearly $2.25 million in August 2006 but the historic home, built more than 100 years ago, could be worth more.

The property is valued at nearly $5 million on Zillow.com….According to the home’s property record, the three-story, single-family home was built in 1905 and includes 19 bedrooms, 12.5 bathrooms, nine fireplaces, a full basement and a pool.

Fire struck the house once before. In 1978, flames consumed a large portion of the upper level.

Jerald Batoff bought the home in 2001, according to Delaware County records. The home was up for sale in the Fall for $6.9 million, a real estate source tells NBC10. It doesn’t appear it ever sold.