Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: January 1986 Volume 24 Number 1, Pages 39–40

Notes and Comments

• Chester County Day
• "Beautiful Berwyn"

Page 39

Chester County Day

The program for the Annual Banquet of the Club, held last October at the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Berwyn, featured a slide presentation of the historic homes and other places included in the 1985 Chester County Day tour. The speaker was Lynn Holt, of Downingtown, a member of the Chester County Hospital Auxiliary and the Chester County Historical Society.

Among the places in the Tour were the Great Valley Presbyterian Church, the Diamond Rock School, the Knox Covered Bridge, and eight eighteenth century or early nineteenth century homes in Tredyffrin Township.

"Beautiful Berwyn"

"Beautiful Berwyn". "Clean and Healthful. A residence suburb. No Factories. No Smoke. No Saloons". "There is no place like home - especially if it is in Berwyn".

These were slogans used in the mid-1890s by the real estate firm of Andrews & Piper to promote the development of Berwyn - that's Berwyn, Illinois, however, not Berwyn, Pennsylvania!

Last fall Joseph Reebeck, of the Berwyn (Illinois) Historical Society, paid a brief visit to our community. During his visit he presented

Page 40

to the Easttown Library several souvenirs and a copy of the history of his Berwyn that had been prepared in 1983 for the 75th anniversary of its incorporation. The way in which it received its name is described in the following excerpt.

"After Wilbur J. Andrews and Charles E. Piper acquired 106 acres adjacent to the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad for a residential development in 1890, they found themselves with a problem. Their subdivision and the train station they were about to build did not have a name. They may have lacked imagination, or perhaps they couldn't agree; in any case, they sought the help of the 'Q's' passenger agent, P. S. Eustis. Mr. Eustis urged the two to find a name not then in use in Illinois to avoid confusing railway time tables or the post office,

"Mr. Eustis had just made a trip east on the Pennsylvania Railroad and remarked how so many of the towns in that region had attractive names. With that Eustis gave Piper and Andrews a bunch of timetables to look through in the hopes of finding a suitable name. As they went through the schedules, they found a name of a small town that was about 18 miles west of Philadelphia. With a little investigating, they found that Berwyn, Pennsylvania, was a beautiful and somewhat affluent village noted for its fine gardens and scenic setting. Since Berwyn, Pa., was the kind of town they hoped they could develop in Illinois, Piper and Andrews thought it would be logical to give the name to their would be community. Were Andrews and Piper aware that Berwyn is a Welsh term that means 'mountainous overlook'? The term applies to that hamlet in Pennsylvania but hardly to the flat lands of Chicago suburbia; then again, Berwyn, Nebraska, is pretty flat, too.

"And so on May 17, 1890, the Cicero town board gave its blessing to Piper and Andrews' development and the name of Berwyn has been with us ever since."